Package: hostapd Version: 2:2.10-12+deb12u2 Severity: important Dear Maintainer,
-- System Information: Distributor ID: Raspbian Description: Raspbian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) Release: 12 Codename: bookworm Architecture: aarch64 Kernel: Linux 6.1.21-v8+ (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT) Kernel taint flags: TAINT_CRAP Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages hostapd depends on: ii init-system-helpers 1.65.2 ii libc6 2.36-9+rpt2+deb12u12 ii libnl-3-200 3.7.0-0.2 ii libnl-genl-3-200 3.7.0-0.2 ii libnl-route-3-200 3.7.0-0.2 ii libssl3 3.0.17-1~deb12u2+rpt1 hostapd recommends no packages. hostapd suggests no packages. -- no debconf information I am filing this not as a bug but as a regression complaint. In Debian Bullseye, hostapd accepted lowercase ISO country codes (e.g. country_code=us) without issue. After upgrading to Bookworm, hostapd now fails to start with: Line 1: Invalid country_code 'us' 1 errors found in configuration file '/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf' Failed to set up interface with /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf Changing country_code=us → country_code=US fixes it. This is technically “correct” according to the ISO 3166-1 standard, but it is a breaking change for existing working configs. Many systems that ran reliably for years now silently fail after a distribution upgrade, leaving users without Wi-Fi AP functionality. It’s unacceptable to break backwards compatibility over capitalization. This isn’t a security issue, nor a meaningful technical improvement. It creates needless frustration and downtime for users who upgrade, and it will waste hours of debugging time for anyone who misses this detail. Please reconsider this strict parsing behavior, or at least provide a clearer error message that explicitly says “country_code must be uppercase (e.g. US, GB, DE).” Document this change in Debian Bookworm release notes and Raspberry Pi OS upgrade notes. Ideally, restore the previous behavior of normalizing lowercase input instead of rejecting it. Breaking existing configurations over case-sensitivity is user-hostile and undermines trust in smooth distribution upgrades.
