- Added new `CRDValidationRatcheting` alpha feature. During a PATCH or UPDATE Validation Ratcheting discards errors thrown by unchanged portions of the resource from most OpenAPI schema validations. ([#118990](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/118990), [@alexzielenski](https://github.com/alexzielenski))

- Kubeadm: avoid panicing if the user has malformed the kubeconfig in the cluster-info config map to not include a valid current context. Include proper validation at the appropriate locations and throw errors instead. ([#134723](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/134723), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

- Kubeadm: the deprecated kube-dns is no longer supported as an option. If "ClusterConfiguration.dns.type" is set to "kube-dns" kubeadm will now throw an error. ([#99646](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99646), [@rajansandeep](https://github.com/rajansandeep)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

- kubeadm: Added better handling of errors during unmount when calling `kubeadm reset`. When failing to unmount directories under `/var/run/kubelet`, kubeadm will now throw an error instead of showing a warning and continuing to clean up said directory. In such situations, it is better for you to inspect the problem and resolve it manually. Then, you can call `kubeadm reset` again to complete the cleanup.

* kubeadm: add a preflight check that throws a warning if the cgroup driver for Docker on Linux is not "systemd" as per the k8s.io CRI installation guide. ([#73837](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/73837), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123))

- Kubeadm: added `show-join-command` as a new separate phase at the end of `kubeadm init`. You can skip printing the join information by using `kubeadm init --skip-phases=show-join-command`. Executing only this phase on demand will throw an error because the phase needs dependencies such as bootstrap tokens to be pre-populated. ([#111512](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/111512), [@SataQiu](https://github.com/SataQiu))

ontainerd.sock`, Windows: `npipe:////./pipe/containerd-containerd`) instead of the one for Docker. If the `Init|JoinConfiguration.nodeRegistration.criSocket` field is empty during cluster creation and multiple sockets are found on the host always throw an error and ask the user to specify which one to use by setting the value in the field. Make sure you update any kubeadm configuration files on disk, to not include the dockershim socket unless you are still using kubelet version < 1.24 with kubeadm...

* Kubeadm no longer throws an error for the --cloud-provider=external flag. ([#58259](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/58259), [@dims](https://github.com/dims))

- Kubeadm: avoid panicing if the user has malformed the kubeconfig in the cluster-info config map to not include a valid current context. Include proper validation at the appropriate locations and throw errors instead. ([#134724](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/134724), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

- Kubeadm: avoid panicing if the user has malformed the kubeconfig in the cluster-info config map to not include a valid current context. Include proper validation at the appropriate locations and throw errors instead. ([#134725](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/134725), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]