valkey-io/valkey 9.2.0-rc2

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Valkey 9.2.0-rc2 - Released Wed 04 November 2026

Upgrade urgency LOW: This is the second release candidate of Valkey 9.2.0.

New Features and Enhanced Behavior

• Add new DELEX command to conditionally delete a string key when its value matches (IFEQ) or differs from (IFNE) a given value by @lightsigma96 (#4607)
• Add Zstd as a streaming compression codec for RDB persistence and replication, offering better compression ratios than LZ4 by @sarthakaggarwal97 (#3798)
• Support streaming-compressed RDB preambles in AOF bases, so compressed full-sync RDB files can be reused directly as AOF bases by @sarthakaggarwal97 (#4754)
• ACL GENPASS and the hash function seed draw randomness from the configured OpenSSL 3 provider when built with TLS, supporting deployments that require a validated crypto module by @MarkAtwood (#4339)
• Support forkless full synchronization to replicas, serving disk and diskless full syncs from a background-thread snapshot without forking by @nitaicaro (#4797)

Performance and Efficiency Improvements

• Speed up sorted set score updates in listpack encoding by replacing the score in place when the member keeps its position by @charsyam (#3491)
• Fix quadratic slowdown in HRANDFIELD and SRANDMEMBER with counts on collections whose elements differ only in letter case by @madolson (#5167)
• Bound the time spent per cycle evicting keys from the client tracking table, avoiding long stalls after lowering tracking-table-max-keys by @tanmayBeginsJourney (#4775)
• Speed up the INFO command by around 5% by pre-allocating the output buffer by @charsyam (#3413)
• Reclaim client-side caching tracking table entries left by disconnected clients, fixing a memory leak under read-heavy workloads, and include the tracking table in active defrag by @rayjinghaolei (#4190)
• Speed up ZPOPMIN and ZPOPMAX on B+tree encoded sorted sets by detaching edge items without a key search or copy by @charsyam (#4852)
• Counting a hash's fields with expirations is now O(1) for hashtable-encoded hashes by tracking the volatile set size on each mutation by @frostzt (#4829)
• Speed up AOF command propagation by serializing commands directly into the AOF buffer, removing an allocation and copy per command by @charsyam (#3496)
• Cache the earliest event-loop timer to avoid an O(N) scan per iteration, reducing overhead with many timers such as RDMA connections by @royenheart (#4354)
• Speed up HGETALL, HKEYS and HVALS with exact-length reply headers, fused bulk replies, and entry prefetching by @jjuleslasarte (#4417)
• Eliminate false sharing in per-thread memory usage counters, improving throughput with I/O threads on SMT x86 systems by @omerrubi-amzn (#4107)
• Read-only list iteration (e.g. LRANGE, LPOS) no longer decompresses and recompresses quicklist nodes in place, cutting CPU cost on compressed lists by @murphyjacob4 (#4782)
• Speed up ZSCAN on btree-encoded sorted sets by avoiding temporary member and score copies and prefetching items by @charsyam (#4856)
• Reduce cache-line false sharing on IO thread activity and job counters for better multi-threaded IO performance by @omerrubi-amzn (#4976)
• PHDELPREFIX now bounds its temporary path copies to 64KiB per batch, avoiding large untracked memory spikes on long shared prefixes by @madolson (#5179)

Bug Fixes

• Reject module write commands while the server is paused for writes, preventing a crash from module timer callbacks during CLIENT PAUSE WRITE or CLUSTER FAILOVER by @smkher (#3645)
• Fix event loop busy-spinning on virtual machines by not using raw TSC for the monotonic clock when the kernel clocksource is not tsc by @quanyeyang (#4707)
• Fix a crash in ValkeyModule_HashHasStringRef on a missing or expired field and correct wrong return values in the hash stringRef module APIs by @ShubhamTaple (#4504)
• Fix a server abort on a RESTORE payload declaring a string length that overflows the allocation size; such payloads are now rejected as bad data by @enjoy-binbin (#4733)
• Fix ZINTER/ZINTERSTORE returning input-order-dependent scores when a weighted term is 0*inf; a NaN weighted score now counts as 0, matching ZUNION by @leomurillo (#4997)
• Fix crashes, lookup hangs, and duplicate set members when keys or elements reach 2 GiB, caused by storing string lengths in a 32-bit integer by @madolson (#5133)
• Fix module global defrag resuming on the wrong module or with a stale cursor when MODULE UNLOAD runs between defrag cycles by @madolson (#5154)
• Propagate PFADD elements applied before a corrupted-HLL INVALIDOBJ error so replicas and the AOF stay consistent with the primary by @madolson (#5128)
• Fix a server crash in SCRIPT DEBUG SYNC mode when a debugger command arrives split across more than one read by @madolson (#5127)
• Fix a server panic when a Lua script returns or raises an error table whose metatable has an __index metamethod that raises an error by @madolson (#5118)
• Fix forkless BGSAVE producing a corrupt snapshot when SWAPDB runs without being replicated, such as from a script with replication disabled by @madolson (#5116)
• Let FLUSHALL and SHUTDOWN cancel a forkless save that is finalizing its file, so a stale snapshot can no longer overwrite the newer dump.rdb by @madolson (#5121)
• Fix a server crash when a module never sets a postponed reply length; the leftover placeholder is now filled with an empty array by @madolson (#5159)
• Fix a memory leak when server.register_function named arguments are repeated in a different letter case by @madolson (#5120)
• Preserve expired but not yet reaped hash fields across listpack-to-hashtable conversion so their deletion is properly reaped and propagated by @frostzt (#4704)
• Fix a double-decremented item count when background iteration is terminated with a SWAPDB or FLUSHDB event queued by @JimB123 (#4750)
• Fix GEOSEARCH returning empty results for exact zero-distance matches on builds where floating-point contraction breaks the latitude distance calculation by @Baraa-Hasheesh (#4777)
• Reject inline commands containing a raw NUL byte with a protocol error instead of leaving the connection stalled by @cjx-zar (#4759)
• Fix a memory leak on normal shutdown caused by I/O worker threads not being terminated and cleaned up by @roshkhatri (#4710)
• XACKDEL with KEEPREF now replies 1 instead of -1 when acknowledging an entry whose stream message was already deleted, matching the ACKED and DELREF modes by @adityamukesh (#4843)
• Fix listpack encoding incompatibility that caused RDB load and replication failures for entries of certain lengths between 9.0 and 9.1.x by @jjuleslasarte (#4819)
• Reject relative expire times in SET/GETEX, RESTORE, and ValkeyModule_SetExpire that overflow when added to the current time, preventing server aborts from negative expires by @madolson (#4880)
• ACL DIGEST now includes role definitions, so editing a role's rules changes the reported fingerprint by @melancholictheory (#4694)
• Fix a server crash when loading an ACL file containing a selector with an unmatched parenthesis by @magic-peach (#4214)
• Fix a segfault on Alpine/musl when Lua is built as a module, caused by a symbol clash on an internal clock function by @mohammedgqudah (#4270)
• Fix lex range seeks, NaN score bound handling, and a memory leak in B+tree sorted sets, and resolve ZRANGEBYLEX LIMIT offsets in logarithmic time by @xiaocj (#4644)
• Fix expired hash fields left untracked after listpack-to-hashtable conversion, which could crash the server on a later write and leave fields that are never reaped by @beyondwin (#4894)
• Restore acceptance of hexadecimal float sorted set scores (such as 0x10), keeping replication and AOF replay compatible with Valkey 9.0 by @quanyeyang (#4875)
• Sorted set range commands with a negative LIMIT offset now return an empty result instead of a spurious element on btree-encoded keys by @xiaocj (#4637)
• Fix HSETEX and HGETEX failing to parse their arguments when the key is named fields by @sebxt (#4945)
• Fix a crash when active defrag's deferred keys outlive a keyspace replacement such as FLUSHDB/FLUSHALL ASYNC, SWAPDB, or a replica's pre-sync flush by @taham0 (#4968)
• Fix LSET on 64-bit builds silently modifying the wrong element for out-of-range indexes instead of returning an index out of range error by @charsyam (#4823)
• Fix a heap buffer overflow in cluster Pub/Sub message construction; oversized PUBLISH and SPUBLISH payloads are now rejected with an error in cluster mode by @roshkhatri (#5030)
• Lex range commands on btree-encoded sorted sets with mixed scores now match listpack results, preventing primary/replica divergence via ZREMRANGEBYLEX and ZRANGESTORE by @pirate329 (#4954)
• Fix a memory leak when GEOSEARCH or GEOSEARCHSTORE is given repeated BYPOLYGON options by @charsyam (#4995)
• DEBUG RELOAD and DEBUG LOADAOF now return a LOADING error while the dataset is loading, avoiding a possible panic by @enjoy-binbin (#4877)
• Fix a memory leak in ValkeyModule_GetCommandKeysWithFlags when introspecting commands with large key lists by @christopherlim98 (#5046)
• MEMORY USAGE now counts hash fields that have expired but not yet been reaped, fixing under-reported sizes by @sushilpaneru1 (#5092)
• Fix a crash in ValkeyModule_Call when script-mode validation fails and error replies were not requested by @dvkashapov (#5091)
• High-priority socket events are no longer drained when the event loop caller did not request file event processing by @enjoy-binbin (#5098)
• Fix a crash when a replication role change command such as REPLICAOF or CLUSTER REPLICATE arrives over a replication link by @madolson (#5187)
• FUNCTION RESTORE now applies the same library load timeout as FUNCTION LOAD, so a never-returning library can no longer block the server forever by @madolson (#5181)
• Fix a buffer overflow in valkey-benchmark when --num-functions is large enough to overflow the generated script buffer by @madolson (#5175)
• Fix a valkey-check-rdb crash with --stats on RDB files whose highest selected database contains no keys by @madolson (#5177)
• Fix a crash on the importing primary when an atomic slot migration fails while its writes are paused by @madolson (#5182)
• Fix GEOSEARCH BYPOLYGON missing matching members when the polygon's vertex centroid falls outside the valid latitude range by @madolson (#5174)
• Fix a primary abort when CLUSTER SETSLOT runs inside MULTI or a script on a primary with online replicas by @madolson (#5141)
• Fix a memory leak when deleting or replacing Lua functions with long names or descriptions by @madolson (#5109)
• A refused oversized XADD no longer creates an empty stream key that replicas and the AOF never receive by @madolson (#5178)
• Prevent a replica crash when the primary wrongly replies +CONTINUE to a full resync request; the replica now drops the link and retries by @madolson (#5126)
• FUNCTION LOAD no longer aborts the server when a library calls server.log() at its top level, including when loading from RDB or AOF by @madolson (#5114)
• RESET on a slot migration connection now returns an error instead of crashing the server with an assertion failure by @madolson (#5140)
• DEBUG SLOTMIGRATION with missing arguments now returns an error instead of crashing the server by @madolson (#5147)
• KEYS on a flushed database no longer leaks a rehashing pause that permanently stops rehashing and can eventually crash the server by @madolson (#5166)
• Automatic RDB snapshots and AOF rewrites are no longer postponed while a forked SCRIPT DEBUG session is open by @madolson (#5153)
• Fix an integer overflow in quicklist node merging that could crash the server on lists loaded with nodes over 4GiB via RESTORE or replication by @madolson (#5163)
• Fix a stack buffer overflow when replying with hundreds of empty strings (e.g. MGET) while reply copy avoidance is active by @madolson (#5151)
• CLUSTER SLOT-STATS ORDERBY no longer replies with uninitialized slot entries when a node's primary is itself a replica that claims slots by @madolson (#5131)
• Fix a race with TLS and io-threads where an IO thread still writing to a client could modify the main thread's event loop by @madolson (#5156)
• Fix a replica crash when a script exceeding busy-reply-threshold ends during CLIENT PAUSE WRITE with a pending replicated write by @madolson (#5150)
• In cluster mode, one cross-slot command in a script no longer makes every later script and function call fail until restart by @madolson (#5191)
• Fix a use-after-free crash when a forkless save is running while a swapdb-mode full sync swaps in the primary's keyspace on a replica by @nitaicaro (#5082)
• Fix a replica assertion crash when the primary writes a key still in use by a forkless (consistent) save by @harrylin98 (#5206)
• Fix a dangling pointer when a key is deleted during a forkless save, which could crash or silently corrupt the iteration by @JimB123 (#4996)
• Clear the script debugger input buffer after a "max client buffer reached" error so later debugger commands in the same session do not keep failing by @madolson (#5129)

Command and API Updates

• Correct command metadata to describe the ZINCRBY increment and ZINTER/ZINTERSTORE/ZUNION/ZUNIONSTORE weights as doubles instead of integers by @sarthakaggarwal97 (#5210)
• Correct command metadata so the numfields count argument of hash field commands is no longer associated with a key specification by @sarthakaggarwal97 (#5211)
• Correct expiry command metadata to show that XX can be combined with GT or LT, rather than all four conditions being mutually exclusive by @sarthakaggarwal97 (#5213)
• Mark the RESTORE and RESTORE-ASKING IDLETIME and FREQ options as mutually exclusive in command metadata by @sarthakaggarwal97 (#5212)
• Correct the HEXPIRE, HPEXPIRE, HEXPIREAT, and HPEXPIREAT command summaries to say they set expiration on hash fields, not the hash object by @poiuj (#4783)
• Add LBOUND, UBOUND, SATURATE, ENX, and PERSIST options to INCREX for bounded increments and conditional expiration control by @murphyjacob4 (#4679)
• Correct SENTINEL SIMULATE-FAILURE metadata so COMMAND DOCS shows the required mode argument and its tokens by @sarthakaggarwal97 (#5208)
• Rename the Path Hash command PHEXISTS to PHPATHEXISTS to clarify that it checks a path rather than a hash field by @yangbodong22011 (#5069)
• Add PHPATHSCAN for ordered incremental path iteration and change PHSCAN to iterate fields and values at an exact path by @yangbodong22011 (#5066)
• Remove PHLONGEST in favor of PHPREFIXES, which now returns matches longest-first with paging and an EXCLUDESELF option by @yangbodong22011 (#5070)
• Replace PHCARD with PHPATHCOUNT, which can also count only the paths under a given prefix by @yangbodong22011 (#5071)
• Replace PHDELPREFIX with PHPATHDEL key path [WITHSUBPATHS], which deletes an exact path or its whole subtree and returns the number of deleted paths by @yangbodong22011 (#5067)
• Mark the absolute timestamp arguments of HEXPIREAT and HPEXPIREAT as unix-time in COMMAND DOCS, matching EXPIREAT and PEXPIREAT by @rainsupreme (#5245)
• Correct ZADD and LCS metadata so COMMAND DOCS and valkey-cli hints no longer present NX with GT/LT or LEN with IDX as valid combinations by @rainsupreme (#5244)

Cluster and Replication

• Decouple rdbcompression (on-disk RDB format) from repl-compression (replication wire format) so setting one no longer affects the other during a full sync by @zuiderkwast (#4749)
• Avoid rapid failover election restarts by fast-failing only on NACK reasons that a new election epoch can actually fix by @enjoy-binbin (#4700)
• Prevent a failover auth NACK for an old election from being counted against the current election by echoing the rejected request epoch by @xdk-amz (#4654)
• Keep a replica's connection to its primary on the main thread so replication flow control works when I/O threads are enabled by @chky1386 (#4765)
• HDEL, HGETDEL, HPERSIST, and HEXPIRE no longer propagate fields they treat as expired, preventing replica and AOF-reload divergence by @xdk-amz (#4772)
• COPY of a hash now includes expired-but-unreaped fields so their deletion is propagated and replicas stay in sync by @pirate329 (#4939)
• Fix atomic slot migration not replicating evictions on the import target, which let replicas grow far past maxmemory by @shanezx-sc (#4920)
• Fix cluster config saving to avoid publishing truncated nodes.conf files, losing the startup lock after the first save, and failing every save on SMB filesystems such as Azure Files; the lock now lives on a separate nodes.conf.lock file by @KewangZhili (#4489)
• Fix failover election fast-fail double-counting a voter that rejected the request and was later marked FAIL, which could abandon a winnable election by @xdk-amz (#4655)
• Fix atomic slot migration with cluster-databases > 1 applying writes made during the snapshot to the wrong database on the target by @pirate329 (#4952)
• Ignore new nodes gossiped by a sender still in handshake so a forged MEET packet cannot fill the cluster node table by @madolson (#5145)
• Ignore invalid ping extension values from cluster peers that would corrupt nodes.conf and prevent the node from restarting by @madolson (#5137)
• Bound the bytes the cluster bus reads per event so a peer with a constant read backlog cannot starve clients, cron and heartbeats by @madolson (#5161)
• Fix incorrect missing-key handling of replicated MULTI/EXEC transactions during a forkless full sync by @JimB123 (#5205)

Configuration

• CONFIG REWRITE now quotes the replicaof host, so hosts with spaces or newlines no longer corrupt the config file by @madolson (#5176)
• Rename the bgsave-default-method config to forkless-policy with values require-fork and prefer-forkless by @madolson (#5261)

Module API Changes

• ValkeyModule_ScanKey and ValkeyModule_ScanKeyRawBorrowed no longer expose expired-but-unreaped fields of listpack-encoded hashes to modules by @madolson (#4885)
• Fix module zset range iteration returning duplicate or phantom elements when changing direction on B+tree encoded sorted sets by @xiaocj (#4645)
• Allow modules to block RESP3 clients that are subscribed to Pub/Sub channels instead of failing ValkeyModule_BlockClient with ENOTSUP by @quanyeyang (#4863)
• Make ValkeyModule_CallArgv public, letting modules invoke commands with lower overhead through reply callbacks by @dvkashapov (#3911)

Observability and Logging

• Attribute LZ4 replication compression context memory to client memory usage so it appears under client memory accounting by @sarthakaggarwal97 (#4702)
• Redact error text in server logs when hide-user-data-from-log is enabled, so command arguments no longer leak into logs by @zackcam (#4815)
• Redact credentials of rejected HELLO, AUTH and MIGRATE commands so passwords no longer leak to MONITOR and the commandlog by @madolson (#5180)
• Replace line breaks in Lua server.log() messages with spaces so scripts cannot forge standalone server log records by @madolson (#5185)

CLI and Tools

• valkey-check-aof now recognizes RDB base files with the VALKEY signature instead of misreporting a valid multipart AOF as invalid by @sarthakaggarwal97 (#4739)
• Increase the valkey-benchmark maximum latency histogram value from 3 to 60 seconds so slow requests are reported accurately by @gabiganam (#3157)
• Fix valkey-benchmark spinning on would-block writes, which could starve reply processing and the --duration timer by @thweetkomputer (#4567)
• Support bracketed IPv6 addresses such as [::1]:7000 in valkey-cli --cluster commands by @chenshi5012 (#4800)
• Fix an unbalanced ] in valkey-cli command hints for commands with repeated optional arguments such as BITFIELD_RO by @ShubhamTaple (#3974)
• valkey-cli no longer prints the command line password warning when the password comes only from VALKEYCLI_AUTH or REDISCLI_AUTH by @madolson (#4886)
• valkey-cli now rejects a zero or negative --hotkeys-count instead of attempting a huge allocation and aborting by @madolson (#5173)
• valkey-cli now skips RESP3 attributes instead of exiting with an unknown reply type error by @madolson (#5186)
• valkey-check-rdb now prints usage when --output is given without a file name instead of crashing by @madolson (#5135)
• valkey-benchmark no longer aborts loading a CSV dataset whose last field in a row is a lone quote; the quote is kept literally by @madolson (#5168)

Build and Tooling

• Link macOS example and test modules through the compiler driver so builds no longer fail on newer SDKs' libSystem stubs by @avifenesh (#4927)
• Rebuild the Lua scripting module during incremental builds when its sources change, so edits are no longer silently left out of valkey-server by @madolson (#5242)

Behavior Changes

• ZRANGEBYSCORE, ZREVRANGEBYSCORE, ZCOUNT, and ZRANGESTORE now reject a bare ( or an empty string as a score bound instead of silently treating it as 0 by @AlisinaDevelo (#4054)
• Path Hash deletion commands now remove the key when the last path is deleted, following the Hash key lifecycle and emitting a generic del event by @yangbodong22011 (#5068)

Full Changelog: 9.2.0-rc1...9.2.0-rc2