* Check for known manifests during preflight instead of only checking for non-empty manifests directory. This makes the preflight checks less heavy-handed by specifically checking for well-known files (kube-apiserver.yaml, kube-controller-manager.yaml, kube-scheduler.yaml, etcd.yaml) in /etc/kubernetes/manifests instead of simply checking for a non-empty directory. ([#57287](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/57287), [@mattkelly](https://github.com/mattkelly))

  repeated KeyToPath items = 2;

  // defaultMode is optional: mode bits used to set permissions on created files by default.
  // Must be an octal value between 0000 and 0777 or a decimal value between 0 and 511.
  // YAML accepts both octal and decimal values, JSON requires decimal values for mode bits.
  // Defaults to 0644.
  // Directories within the path are not affected by this setting.

- Kubeadm: Ensured that during "upgrade" , if the "etcd.yaml" static pod did not need upgrade, still consider rotating the etcd certificates and restarting the etcd static pod if the "kube-apiserver.yaml" manifest was to be upgraded and if certificate renewal was not disabled. ([#124688](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/124688), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123))...

* Fix aggressive VM calls for Azure VMSS ([#83102](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/83102), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer))

    * Disable timestamp adjustment in logs to optimize performance.
    * Reduce logging agent buffer chunk limit to 512k to optimize performance.
* Fix a bug on GCE that /etc/crictl.yaml is not generated when crictl is preloaded. ([#66877](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66877), [@Random-Liu](https://github.com/Random-Liu))

  </mime-type>

  <mime-type type="text/x-yaml">
    <_comment>YAML source code</_comment>
    <alias type="application/x-yaml" />
    <alias type="application/x-yml" />
    <alias type="application/yaml" />
    <alias type="text/vnd.yaml" />
    <alias type="text/yaml" />
    <alias type="text/x-yml" />
    <glob pattern="*.yaml"/>
    <glob pattern="*.yml"/>
    <sub-class-of type="text/plain"/>

- Fix unsafe JSON construction in a number of locations in the codebase ([#81158](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81158), [@zouyee](https://github.com/zouyee))

### Other notable changes

* Fix aggressive VM calls for Azure VMSS ([#83102](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/83102), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer))

- Kubeadm: fix a regression where the KubeletConfiguration is not properly downloaded during "kubeadm upgrade" commands from the kube-system/kubelet-config ConfigMap, resulting in the local '/var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml' file being written as a defaulted config. ([#124497](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/124497), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

## Dependencies

### Added

		* `kubectl version` has new flag --output (=json or yaml) allowing result of the command to be parsed in either json format or yaml. ([#39858](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/39858), [@alejandroEsc](https://github.com/alejandroEsc))


  * Bug fixes