Official release (1.18.3) is not working with polkadot validators.

[deigenvektor]

The patch 1.18.3, created to fix an issue on KSM leads to failed startup on polkadot validators.
While this is appears to be intentional:
2025-05-10 08:29:11 This binary is meant to be used on Kusama only!,

Any validator using the official release channels for their polkadot nodes will crash their validators upon upgrading.

[kianenigma]

Yeah this should be an issue if a validator is using some auto update mechanism that automatically getting the latest binary from this repo. This is what you mean right? And do you happen to have such a system?

I am not sure if such an auto-update mechanism is useful. Also, if you know how it is implemented. Maybe we can then make sure such "emergency" releases are filtered out of such auto-upgrade tools.

[deigenvektor]

Yeah this should be an issue if a validator is using some auto update mechanism that automatically getting the latest binary from this repo. This is what you mean right? And do you happen to have such a system?

I am not sure if such an auto-update mechanism is useful. Also, if you know how it is implemented. Maybe we can then make sure such "emergency" releases are filtered out of such auto-upgrade tools.

Yes, in general validators running automated upgrades via package manager would be affected.
We were not affected by this (but whether we specifically were affected is not important in our view).

The package manager sources are also referenced here.
https://docs.polkadot.com/infrastructure/running-a-validator/onboarding-and-offboarding/set-up-validator/#install-with-package-managers

We believe it is highly undesirable in general to have the latest, stable release of any software not working.
In this case, because polkadot is the mainnet this is especially severe in our view.

A hotfix for kusama that intentionally breaks the mainnet sources should not be distributed via the channels also referenced and used for polkadot validators.

[deigenvektor]

Since this is fixed with 1.18.4, closing the issue.