ovs-ctl(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | EXAMPLE | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | COPYRIGHT | COLOPHON

OVS-CTL(8)                    Open vSwitch                    OVS-CTL(8)

NAME         top

       ovs-ctl - OVS startup helper script

SYNOPSIS         top

       ovs-ctl --system-id=random|<uuid> [<options>] start

       ovs-ctl stop

       ovs-ctl --system-id=random|<uuid> [<options>] restart

       ovs-ctl status

       ovs-ctl version

       ovs-ctl [<options>] load-kmod

       ovs-ctl --system-id=random|<uuid> [<options>] force-reload-kmod

       ovs-ctl [--protocol=<protocol>] [--sport=<sport>]
       [--dport=<dport>] enable-protocol

       ovs-ctl delete-transient-ports

       ovs-ctl help | -h | --help

       ovs-ctl --version

DESCRIPTION         top

       The ovs-ctl program starts, stops, and checks the status of Open
       vSwitch daemons.  It is not meant to be invoked directly by
       system administrators but to be called internally by system
       startup scripts.

       Each ovs-ctl command is described separately below.

   The start command
       The start command starts Open vSwitch.  It performs the following
       tasks:

       1. Loads the Open vSwitch kernel module.  If this fails, and the
          Linux bridge module is loaded but no bridges exist, it tries
          to unload the bridge module and tries loading the Open vSwitch
          kernel module again.  (This is because the Open vSwitch kernel
          module cannot coexist with the Linux bridge module before
          2.6.37.)

       The start command skips the following steps if ovsdb-server is
       already running:

       2. If the Open vSwitch database file does not exist, it creates
          it.  If the database does exist, but it has an obsolete
          version, it upgrades it to the latest schema.

       3. Starts ovsdb-server, unless the --no-ovsdb-server command
          option is given.

       4. Initializes a few values inside the database.

       5. If the --delete-bridges option was used, deletes all of the
          bridges from the database.

       6. If the --delete-transient-ports option was used, deletes all
          ports that have other_config:transient set to true.

       The start command skips the following step if ovs-vswitchd is
       already running, or if the --no-ovs-vswitchd command option is
       given:

       7. Starts ovs-vswitchd.

   Options
       Several command-line options influence the start command’s
       behavior.  Some form of the following option should ordinarily be
       specified:

       • --system-id=<uuid> or --system-id=random

         This specifies a unique system identifier to store into
         external-ids:system-id in the database’s Open_vSwitch table.
         Remote managers that talk to the Open vSwitch database server
         over network protocols use this value to identify and
         distinguish Open vSwitch instances, so it should be unique (at
         least) within OVS instances that will connect to a single
         controller.

         When random is specified, ovs-ctl will generate a random ID
         that persists from one run to another (stored in a file).  When
         another string is specified ovs-ctl uses it literally.

       The following options should be specified if the defaults are not
       suitable:

       • --system-type=<type> or --system-version=<version>

         Sets the value to store in the system-type and system-version
         columns, respectively, in the database’s Open_vSwitch table.
         Remote managers may use these values too determine the kind of
         system to which they are connected (primarily for display to
         human administrators).

         When not specified, ovs-ctl uses values from the optional
         system-type.conf and system-version.conf files (see Files) or
         it uses the lsb_release program, if present, to provide
         reasonable defaults.

       The following options are also likely to be useful:

       • --external-id="<name>=<value>"

         Sets external-ids:<name> to <value> in the database’s
         Open_vSwitch table.  Specifying this option multiple times adds
         multiple key-value pairs.

       • --delete-bridges

         Ordinarily Open vSwitch bridges persist from one system boot to
         the next, as long as the database is preserved.  Some
         environments instead expect to re-create all of the bridges and
         other configuration state on every boot.  This option supports
         that, by deleting all Open vSwitch bridges after starting
         ovsdb-server but before starting ovs-vswitchd.

       • --delete-transient-ports

         Deletes all ports that have other_config:transient set to true.
         This is important on certain environments where some ports are
         going to be recreated after reboot, but other ports need to be
         persisted in the database.

       • --ovs-user=user[:group]

         Ordinarily Open vSwitch daemons are started as the user
         invoking the ovs-ctl command.  Some system administrators would
         prefer to have the various daemons spawn as different users in
         their environments.  This option allows passing the --user
         option to the ovsdb-server and ovs-vswitchd daemons, allowing
         them to change their privilege levels.

       The following options are less important:

       • --no-monitor

         By default ovs-ctl passes --monitor to ovs-vswitchd and
         ovsdb-server, requesting that it spawn a process monitor which
         will restart the daemon if it crashes.  This option suppresses
         that behavior.

       • --daemon-cwd=<directory>

         Specifies the current working directory that the OVS daemons
         should run from.  The default is / (the root directory) if this
         option is not specified.  (This option is useful because most
         systems create core files in a process’s current working
         directory and because a file system that is in use as a
         process’s current working directory cannot be unmounted.)

       • --no-force-corefiles

         By default, ovs-ctl enables core dumps for the OVS daemons.
         This option disables that behavior.

       • --no-mlockall

         By default ovs-ctl passes --mlockall to ovs-vswitchd,
         requesting that it lock all of its virtual memory, preventing
         it from being paged to disk.  This option suppresses that
         behavior.

       • --no-self-confinement

         Disable self-confinement for ovs-vswitchd and ovsdb-server
         daemons.  This flag may be used when, for example, OpenFlow
         controller creates its Unix Domain Socket outside OVS run
         directory and OVS needs to connect to it.  It is better to
         stick with the default behavior and not to use this flag,
         unless:

         • You have Open vSwitch running under SELinux or AppArmor
           Mandatory Access Control that would prevent OVS from messing
           with sockets outside ordinary OVS directories.

         • You believe that relying on protocol handshakes (e.g.
           OpenFlow) is enough to prevent OVS to adversely interact with
           other daemons running on your system.

         • You don’t have much worries of remote OVSDB exploits in the
           first place, because, perhaps, OVSDB manager is running on
           the same host as OVS and share similar attack vectors.

       • --ovsdb-server-priority=<niceness> or
         --ovs-vswitchd-priority=<niceness>

         Sets the nice(1) level used for each daemon.  All of them
         default to -10.

       • --ovsdb-server-wrapper=<wrapper> or
         --ovs-vswitchd-wrapper=<wrapper>

         Configures the specified daemon to run under <wrapper>, which
         is one of the following:

         • valgrind: Run the daemon under valgrind(1), if it is
           installed, logging to <daemon>.valgrind.log.<pid> in the log
           directory.

         • strace: Run the daemon under strace(1), if it is installed,
           logging to <daemon>.strace.log.<pid> in the log directory.

         • glibc: Enable GNU C library features designed to find memory
           errors.

         By default, no wrapper is used.

         Each of the wrappers can expose bugs in Open vSwitch that lead
         to incorrect operation, including crashes.  The valgrind and
         strace wrappers greatly slow daemon operations so they should
         not be used in production.  They also produce voluminous logs
         that can quickly fill small disk partitions.  The glibc wrapper
         is less resource-intensive but still somewhat slows the
         daemons.

       The following options control file locations.  They should only
       be used if the default locations cannot be used.  See FILES,
       below, for more information.

       • --db-file=<file>

         Overrides the file name for the OVS database.

       • --db-sock=<socket>

         Overrides the file name for the Unix domain socket used to
         connect to ovsdb-server.

       • --db-schema=<schema>

         Overrides the file name for the OVS database schema.

       • --extra-dbs=<file>

         Adds <file> as an extra database for ovsdb-server to serve out.
         Multiple space-separated file names may also be specified.
         <file> should begin with /; if it does not, then it will be
         taken as relative to <dbdir>.

   The stop command
       The stop command stops the ovs-vswitchd and ovsdb-server daemons.
       It does not unload the Open vSwitch kernel modules. It can take
       the same --no-ovsdb-server and --no-ovs-vswitchd options as that
       of the start command.

       This command does nothing and finishes successfully if the OVS
       daemons aren’t running.

   The restart command
       The restart command performs a stop followed by a start command.
       The command can take the same options as that of the start
       command. In addition, it saves and restores OpenFlow flows for
       each individual bridge.

   The status command
       The status command checks whether the OVS daemons ovs-vswitchd
       and ovsdb-server are running and prints messages with that
       information.  It exits with status 0 if the daemons are running,
       1 otherwise.

   The version command
       The version command runs ovsdb-server --version and ovs-vswitchd
       --version.

   The force-reload-kmod command
       The force-reload-kmod command allows upgrading the Open vSwitch
       kernel module without rebooting.  It performs the following
       tasks:

       1. Gets a list of OVS “internal” interfaces, that is, network
          devices implemented by Open vSwitch.  The most common examples
          of these are bridge “local ports”.

       2. Saves the OpenFlow flows of each bridge.

       3. Stops the Open vSwitch daemons, as if by a call to ovs-ctl
          stop.

       4. Saves the kernel configuration state of the OVS internal
          interfaces listed in step 1, including IP and IPv6 addresses
          and routing table entries.

       5. Unloads the Open vSwitch kernel module (including the bridge
          compatibility module if it is loaded).

       6. Starts OVS back up, as if by a call to ovs-ctl start.  This
          reloads the kernel module, restarts the OVS daemons and
          finally restores the saved OpenFlow flows.

       7. Restores the kernel configuration state that was saved in step
          4.

       8. Checks for daemons that may need to be restarted because they
          have packet sockets that are listening on old instances of
          Open vSwitch kernel interfaces and, if it finds any, prints a
          warning on stdout.  DHCP is a common example: if the ISC DHCP
          client is running on an OVS internal interface, then it will
          have to be restarted after completing the above procedure.
          (It would be nice if ovs-ctl could restart daemons
          automatically, but the details are far too specific to a
          particular distribution and installation.)

       force-kmod-reload internally stops and starts OVS, so it accepts
       all of the options accepted by the start command except for the
       --no-ovs-vswitchd option.

   The load-kmod command
       The load-kmod command loads the openvswitch kernel modules if
       they are not already loaded.  This operation also occurs as part
       of the start command.  The motivation for providing the load-kmod
       command is to allow errors when loading modules to be handled
       separately from other errors that may occur when running the
       start command.

       By default the load-kmod command attempts to load the openvswitch
       kernel module.

   The enable-protocol command
       The enable-protocol command checks for rules related to a
       specified protocol in the system’s iptables(8) configuration.  If
       there are no rules specifically related to that protocol, then it
       inserts a rule to accept the specified protocol.

       More specifically:

       • If iptables is not installed or not enabled, this command does
         nothing, assuming that lack of filtering means that the
         protocol is enabled.

       • If the INPUT chain has a rule that matches the specified
         protocol, then this command does nothing, assuming that
         whatever rule is installed reflects the system administrator’s
         decisions.

       • Otherwise, this command installs a rule that accepts traffic of
         the specified protocol.

       This command normally completes successfully, even if it does
       nothing.  Only the failure of an attempt to insert a rule
       normally causes it to return an exit code other than 0.

       The following options control the protocol to be enabled:

       • --protocol=<protocol>

         The name of the IP protocol to be enabled, such as gre or tcp.
         The default is gre.

       • --sport=<sport> or --dport=<dport>

         TCP or UDP source or destination port to match.  These are
         optional and allowed only with --protocol=tcp or
         --protocol=udp.

   The delete-transient-ports command
       Deletes all ports that have the other_config:transient value set
       to true.

   The help command
       Prints a usage message and exits successfully.

OPTIONS         top

       In addition to the options listed for each command above, these
       options control the behavior of several ovs-ctl commands.

       By default, ovs-ctl controls the ovsdb-server and ovs-vswitchd
       daemons.  The following options restrict that control to exclude
       one or the other:

       • --no-ovsdb-server

         Specifies that the ovs-ctl commands start, stop, and restart
         should not modify the running status of ovsdb-server.

       • --no-ovs-vswitchd

         Specifies that the ovs-ctl commands start, stop, and restart
         should not modify the running status of ovs-vswitchd.  It is an
         error to include this option with the force-reload-kmod
         command.

EXIT STATUS         top

       ovs-ctl exits with status 0 on success and nonzero on failure.
       The start command is considered to succeed if OVS is already
       started; the stop command is considered to succeed if OVS is
       already stopped.

ENVIRONMENT         top

       The following environment variables affect ovs-ctl:

       • PATH

         ovs-ctl does not hardcode the location of any of the programs
         that it runs.  ovs-ctl will add the <sbindir> and <bindir> that
         were specified at configure time to PATH, if they are not
         already present.

       • OVS_LOGDIR, OVS_RUNDIR, OVS_DBDIR, OVS_SYSCONFDIR,
         OVS_PKGDATADIR, OVS_BINDIR, OVS_SBINDIR

         Setting one of these variables in the environment overrides the
         respective configure option, both for ovs-ctl itself and for
         the other Open vSwitch programs that it runs.

FILES         top

       ovs-ctl uses the following files:

       • ovs-lib

         Shell function library used internally by ovs-ctl.  It must be
         installed in the same directory as ovs-ctl.

       • <logdir>/<daemon>.log

         Per-daemon logfiles.

       • <rundir>/<daemon>.pid

         Per-daemon pidfiles to track whether a daemon is running and
         with what process ID.

       • <pkgdatadir>/vswitch.ovsschema

         The OVS database schema used to initialize the database (use
         --db-schema to override this location).

       • <dbdir>/conf.db

         The OVS database (use --db-file to override this location).

       • <rundir>/openvswitch/db.sock

         The Unix domain socket used for local communication with
         ovsdb-server (use --db-sock to override this location).

       • <sysconfdir>/openvswitch/system-id.conf

         The persistent system UUID created and read by
         --system-id=random.

       • <sysconfdir>/openvswitch/system-type.conf and
         <sysconfdir>/openvswitch/system-version.conf

         The system-type and system-version values stored in the
         database’s Open_vSwitch table when not specified as a
         command-line option.

EXAMPLE         top

       The file debian/openvswitch-switch.init in the Open vSwitch
       source distribution is a good example of how to use ovs-ctl.

SEE ALSO         top

       README.rst, ovsdb-server(8), ovs-vswitchd(8).

AUTHOR         top

       The Open vSwitch Development Community

COPYRIGHT         top

       2016-2024, The Open vSwitch Development Community

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the Open vSwitch (a distributed virtual
       multilayer switch) project.  Information about the project can be
       found at ⟨http://openvswitch.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, send it to [email protected].  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2024-06-07.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

3.3.90                        Jun 13, 2024                    OVS-CTL(8)

Pages that refer to this page: ovs-kmod-ctl(8)ovs-vswitchd(8)