- Fixed a bug around restarting init containers in the right order relative to normal containers with `SidecarContainers` feature enabled. ([#120269](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/120269), [@gjkim42](https://github.com/gjkim42))

For more information, see [#53288](https://issue.k8s.io/53288).

* `kubeadm init` and `kubeadm join` invocations on newly installed systems can encounter a `/var/lib/kubelet is not empty` message during pre-flight checks that prevents setup. If this is the only pre-flight failure, it can be safely ignored with `--skip-preflight-checks`.

For more information, see [#53356](https://issue.k8s.io/53356#issuecomment-333748618).

- Overall, enable the feature of `PreferNominatedNode` will  improve the performance of scheduling where preemption might frequently happen, but in theory, enable the feature of `PreferNominatedNode`, the pod might not be scheduled to the best candidate node in the cluster. ([#93179](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/93179), [@chendave](https://github.com/chendave)) [SIG Scheduling and Testing]

  which the scheduler might miss some updates for the Pods rejected by NodeUnschedulable plugin and put the Pods in the queue for a longer time than needed. ([#127427](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/127427), [@sanposhiho](https://github.com/sanposhiho)) [SIG Scheduling]
- Fixes the bug in PodTopologySpread that only happens with QHint enabled, 

### Bug or Regression

- Fixes a race condition in the iptables mode of kube-proxy in 1.27 and later
  that could result in some updates getting lost (e.g., when a service gets a
  new endpoint, the rules for the new endpoint might not be added until
  much later). ([#122815](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122815), [@wedaly](https://github.com/wedaly)) [SIG Network]

 - CSINode initialization does not crash kubelet on startup when APIServer is not reachable or kubelet has not the right credentials yet. ([#89589](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/89589), [@jsafrane](https://github.com/jsafrane)) [SIG Storage]

image requiring credential verification is always pulled if authentication information from an image pull is not yet present, thus enforcing authentication / re-authentication. This means an image pull might be attempted even in cases where a pod requests the `IfNotPresent` image pull policy, and might lead to the pod not starting if its pull policy is `Never` and is unable to present authentication information that led to a previous successful pull of the image it is requesting. ([#128152](https:/...

   ([#121461](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/121461), [@alexzielenski](https://github.com/alexzielenski))
- Scheduler now skips the `NodeAffinity Score` plugin when it has nothing to do with a Pod. You might have noticed an increase in the metric `plugin_execution_duration_seconds` for `extension_point=score` and `plugin=NodeAffinity`, because the plugin only runs when it's relevant.

* Pod priority and preemption is now enabled by default. Even if you don't plan to use this feature, you might need to take some action immediately after upgrading. In multi-tenant clusters where not all users are trusted, you are advised to create appropriate quotas for two default priority classes, system-cluster-critical and system-node-critical, which are...

- Failed pods associated with a job with `parallelism = 1` are recreated by the job controller honoring exponential backoff delay again. However, for jobs with `parallelism > 1`, pods might be created without exponential backoff delay. ([#115020](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/115020), [@nikhita](https://github.com/nikhita)) [SIG Apps]