# Kea 2.7.8 Release Notes, April 30th, 2025 Welcome to Kea 2.7.8, a monthly release of the 2.7 development series. As with any other development release, use this with caution: development releases are not recommended for production use. Kea is a DHCP implementation developed by Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) that features DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 servers with DNS update and a REST API; optional database support (MySQL and PostgreSQL); optional RADIUS, Kerberos, YANG/NETCONF, and GSS-TSIG support; and much more. Kea provides extensive management capabilities, including but not limited to: TLS support, Role-Based Access Control, run-time configuration monitoring and updates via a REST API, host reservations, and client classification. The text below references issue numbers. For more details, visit the Kea GitLab page at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea/-/issues. For details about Docker issues, visit the page at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea-docker/-/issues/. For details about packaging, visit the page at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea-packaging/-/issues/. This is the first Kea release that provides a full-featured Meson build system that is expected to soon replace our old Autotools-based system. Feedback is much appreciated. Please send your experiences and suggestions to kea-users mailing list or open issues in GitLab. The following bug fixes and features have been implemented since the previous release: 1. **Meson build system**: Kea now features a Meson-based build system. Many tweaks related to migration to Meson build system were performed in this release: new developers' documentation; the addition of previously missing tests and the addition of `--install` and `--pyinstaller` to our meson.sh script; and fixes to the localstatedir when prefix is default, to GSS-TSIG builds, to macOS builds, and to sysconfdir. Our CI scripts (on both GitLab and GitHub), as well as fuzzing builds, are now using Meson [#3732]. Hammer is now using Meson [#3812]. We've enabled more strict compilation flags and fixed the many compilation warnings that followed [#3785]. Feedback regarding the new build system is more than welcome. While currently the source code has both Autotools and Meson builds, the long-term plan is to retire Autotools and continue with Meson exclusively. Introducing Meson also addressed or made obsolete a number of older Autotools issues [#568, #669, #860, #926, #1001, #1933, #1992, #2695, #2699, #2747, #2999]. 2. **Subnet commands improvements**: The `subnet4-list` and `subnet6-list` API commands now return the shared network name, if present [#3811]. 3. **Syslog support for the forensic logging hook**: The forensic logging hook is now able to log using syslog as a new alternative to the already supported methods of logging to a file and logging to a database [#3569]. 4. **Bug fixes**: A problem was fixed where leases created by earlier Kea versions could not be updated in some rare circumstances, if the MySQL backend was used [#3763]. We corrected an issue which caused kea-dhcp4 to NAK requests for an offered lease, when a conflicting host reservation existed and offer-lifetime was greater than zero. The server now removes the unusable lease, renews the temporary lease, and sends it back in a DHCPACK [#3555]. 5. **Testing**: The GitHub CI workflow was updated to use the latest CodeQL definitions [#3745]. 6. **Documentation**: The Meson build is now documented properly [#3732]. We clarified how classes impact option order precedence [#3748]. ## Incompatible Changes There are no incompatible changes. ## License This version of Kea is released under the Mozilla Public License, version 2.0. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0 Some Kea hook libraries are provided under the MPL 2.0; others are licensed with the [Kea Hooks Basic Commercial End User License](https://www.isc.org/kea-premium-license/). The source for each hook library includes the applicable license. ## Download Pre-built ISC packages for current versions of the most popular Linux operating systems are available at: https://cloudsmith.io/~isc/repos/ Pre-built Docker images, as well as Docker files, are available. For details, see: https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea-docker The Kea source and PGP signature for this release may be downloaded from: https://www.isc.org/download The signature was generated with the ISC code-signing key, which is available at: https://www.isc.org/pgpkey ISC provides detailed documentation, including installation instructions and usage tutorials, in the Kea Administrator Reference Manual. Documentation is included with the installation or at https://kea.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html in HTML, PDF, or EPUB formats. ISC maintains a public open source code tree, wiki, issue tracking system, milestone planner, and roadmap at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea. Limitations and known issues with this release can be found at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea/-/wikis/known-issues-list. We ask users of this software to please let us know how it worked for you and what operating system you tested on. Feel free to share your feedback on the Kea Users mailing list (https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/kea-users). We would also like to hear whether the documentation is adequate and accurate. Please open tickets in the Kea GitLab project for bugs, documentation omissions and errors, and enhancement requests. We want to hear from you even if everything worked. ## Support Professional support for Kea is available from ISC. We encourage all professional users to consider this option; Kea maintenance is funded with support subscriptions. For more information on ISC's Kea software support, see https://www.isc.org/support/. Free best-effort support is provided by our user community via a mailing list. Information on all public email lists is available at https://www.isc.org/community/mailing-list. If you have any comments or questions about working with Kea, please share them to the Kea Users list (https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/kea-users). Bugs and feature requests may be submitted via GitLab at https://gitlab.isc.org/isc-projects/kea/-/issues. ## Changes The following summarizes changes and important upgrades since the previous release. 2343. [build] wlodek The library version numbers have been bumped up for the Kea 2.7.8 development release. (Gitlab #3863) 2342. [bug] andrei A MySQL error that rarely occurs in unknown circumstances that can prevent Kea from renewing leases that have null or invalid JSON values in the user_context column is now handled in the lease triggers. (Gitlab #3763) 2341. [build] andrei Kea built with Meson is now officially tested. Some bugs related to the Meson build system were fixed. Documentation about how to build Kea with Meson was added. (Gitlab #3732, #3812) 2340. [func] tmark The subnet commands hook library was modified such that the subnet's shared network name is now included for each subnet returned by the subnet4-list and subnet6-list commands. (Gitlab #3811) 2339. [bug] tmark Corrected an issue which caused kea-dhcp4 to NAK requests for an offered lease when a conflicting host reservation exists and offer-lifetime is greater than zero. The server will now remove the unusable lease, renew the temporary lease, and send it back in a DHCPACK. (Gitlab #3555) 2338. [doc] tmark Clarified how classes impact option order precedence. (Gitlab #3748) 2337. [bug] tmark When generating FQDNs from IP addresses for DDNS, kea-dhcp6 will now append a zero to the end of prefixes that would otherwise end in a hyphen. (Gitlab #3781) 2336. [func] razvan Added support for syslog backend in forensic log hook library. (Gitlab #3569) Thank you again to everyone who assisted us in making this release possible. We look forward to receiving your feedback.