Release Notes for Alpine 3.21.0

As always, make sure to read Upgrading Alpine to a new major release when upgrading to a new release.
If you experience any issues with the upgrade, please let us know and file an issue in our repositories.
== Important changes ==
=== OpenSSH service requires restart ===
From the 9.8_p1 release, and on, of , is split into two binaries (/usr/lib/ssh/sshd-session and /usr/sbin/sshd). Due to this change, it will not be possible to ssh into a system that has upgraded from a release prior to 9.8_p1 to this release or later, without restarting the sshd service.
We have previously brought attention to this - https://alpinelinux.org/posts/2024-07-02-openssh-upgrade-edge.html
Managing services has always been out-of-scope for , but this one time we will make an exception when the following conditions are met:
# You have both the and packages installed at a version lower than 9.8_p1
# The sshd service is started
We will then, post upgrade, have a post-upgrade script that will:
# Print a message on what is about to happen and why
# Restart the sshd service
# If the command to restart the service fails for any reason, a warning message will be printed and an error code returned to apk, to be noticed by the end of the package upgrades (this will not interrupt the upgrade process).
We have decided to do this in order to help keep you from getting locked out of your system(s) and be able to fix any issues with the upgrade.
See also:
* https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3706
* https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports/commit/?id=6adff08ae09961d4eea66b55a8cca14d3941fb53
=== New loongarch64 architecture ===
Alpine 3.21 is the first release which is available for loongarch64.
Thanks to the support of the team of Loongson dedicated to supporting Alpine Linux and many other contributors.
=== Preparations for /usr-merge ===
Plans for /usr-merge are underway and we should be able to finalize it in Alpine Linux, version 3.22.
Much preparation has gone into this release to ensure that the merge happens as smoothly as possible. That included moving the location of some binaries and many libraries from /bin, /sbin, and /lib to their counterparts in /usr. As part of the merge, /usr will be mounted from the initramfs to make sure everybody has all necessary binaries in place.
Users with installations where / and /usr are on separate filesystems (partitions, volumes, disk drives or other) should proceed with care and report any issues. They should also ensure that an entry /usr is added to /etc/fstab before upgrading, and all modules required to mount /usr from the initramfs are added to mkinitfs configuration. New/fresh installations of v3.21 will work out of the box without modification. Please note that / on separate filesystem than /usr is not officially supported.
If you have one of these setups, and have doubts about the configuration, you can open an issue and ping @pabloyoyoista. We will also publish a blog post soon with further information on the timeline and progress of the merge, as well as how the changes may affect users.
== Significant changes ==
=== Jellyfin ===
Jellyfin now uses the recommended fork of ffmpeg called by default. If you want to change the default, take a look at the ffmpegpath variable in /etc/conf.d/jellyfin. ()
Jellyfin was disabled for ARM architectures (aarch64 and armv7) and is only available for x86_64. ()
=== Bats ===
main/bats was renamed to main/bats-core. There is now a meta package community/bats which contains:
* 
* 
* 
* 
=== Xen 4.19 ===
qemu-traditional and stubdom are removed from the build in this release, see https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports/commit/?id=24217a24da3924039b000eb17c04bf3f01bf1f12
There is still the package, but the regular aport is now built with Xen support, so a package can be used instead.
You can choose to use it in your xl.cfg(1) like so:
device_model_override = "/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64"
device_model_version = "qemu-xen"
=== uutils-coreutils ===
 is repackaged as a sub-package to in such a way as to be a drop-in replacement for GNU .
If you have both and installed, the latter will be purged and its symlinks replaced with ones pointing to the /usr/bin/uutils binary. The /usr/bin/uutils-* symlinks, previously provided by , no longer exist.
If you prefer to use GNU , remove the package before upgrading, and then add the package, containing the /usr/bin/uutils binary.
A few parts of the aport are also split into subpackages, to avoid conflicts or other issues.
=== linux-firmware ===
 is now compressed with ZSTD compression. If you run a custom built Linux kernel, you need to ensure that CONFIG_FW_LOADER_COMPRESS_ZSTD=y is set in your configuration.
== Note-worthy updates ==
As always, a lot of packages were upgraded. Make sure to read the indivdual release notes of the projects you use.
* Linux 6.12
* busybox 1.37
* GCC 14.2
* LLVM 19
* Go 1.23
* Rust 1.83
* PHP 8.4
* GNOME 47
* KDE Plasma 6.2
* LXQt 2.1
* Qt 6.8
* wlroots 0.18
=== GCC 14 ===
The Gnu Compiler Collection was upgraded to 14.2.0 and as a result, all packages built with in Alpine 3.21 are compiled with GCC 14.2.0.
Make sure to read all changes: https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-14/changes.html
=== LXQt 2.1 ===
LXQt has been updated to release 2.1.0 
* It now uses Qt6
* Many parts of LXQt are now Wayland ready¹, but Wayland ports of the following are pending: , , and keyboard indicator, some input settings, as well as settings for monitor, power button, and screen locker.
* LXQt Panel has a new default application menu called Fancy Menu.
¹ lxqt-wayland-session has not been packaged yet, but most folks wanting to test on Wayland will want to use it.
=== Linux 6.12 ===
Alpine 3.21.0 ships Linux 6.12.1 in the package.
=== PostgreSQL 17 ===
This release features . We dropped support for , and moved from main to community.
=== LLVM 19 ===
We packaged LLVM 19 in our repositories. A total of 5 LLVM versions are supported: , , , , .
=== GNOME 47 ===
 has been held back to version 45, after several regressions in the apk plugin on update. See for more details.
== Significant removals ==
=== Disabled packages due to FTBS ===
The following packages are temporarily disabled because they failed to build. We will try to restore them as soon as possible.
* ()
* ()
* ()
* ()
* ()
* ()
=== ISC DHCP ===
If you are still running an ISC DHCP server, you are advised to migrate to a maintained alternative before upgrading to the 3.21 release.
ISC DHCP has been EoL since 2022. They have a guide for migrating to here: https://www.isc.org/dhcp_migration/
Up to, and including, the 3.20 version of Alpine, the aport has the subpackage that is a tool for helping with migration from ISC DHCP configuration to ISC Kea configuration.
Alternative DHCP servers packaged in Alpine include:
* 
* 
* 
* udhcpd - packaged in 
==== dracut-modules-network network-legacy removal ====
As a consequence of the above, the network-legacy module has been removed from , as it had a depedency on the sub-package of the ISC DHCP aport.
=== Gogs ===
gogs was removed due to multiple high-severity vulnerabilities for which issues have remained open for a year. The developers of Gogs were contacted multiple times by the Forgejo team but unfortunately received no response. Therefore we have removed Gogs from our repositories. ()
Please consider migrating to or . Both forks are available in our community repo.
The Gitea fork of Gogs was created in 2016 by contributors who were frustrated with the single-maintainer management model of Gogs. Forgejo is a fork of Gitea which was created as a result of the for-profit company Gitea Ltd taking over maintainership (see also https://forgejo.org/compare-to-gitea/).
=== neofetch ===
The upstream repository was archived in April and became unmaintained, therefore we have removed it from our repositories. provides similar functionality.
=== .NET 6 ===
.NET 6 reached EOL in 12 November 2024 (see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/dotnet-6-end-of-support/) and the following packages have been moved to the testing repository ():
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
* 
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