Provided by: ovn-host_2.9.8-0ubuntu0.18.04.5_amd64 
NAME
ovn-controller - Open Virtual Network local controller
SYNOPSIS
ovn-controller [options] [ovs-database]
DESCRIPTION
ovn-controller is the local controller daemon for OVN, the Open Virtual Network. It
connects up to the OVN Southbound database (see ovn-sb(5)) over the OVSDB protocol, and
down to the Open vSwitch database (see ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5)) over the OVSDB protocol
and to ovs-vswitchd(8) via OpenFlow. Each hypervisor and software gateway in an OVN
deployment runs its own independent copy of ovn-controller; thus, ovn-controller’s
downward connections are machine-local and do not run over a physical network.
ACL LOGGING
ACL log messages are logged through ovn-controller’s logging mechanism. ACL log entries
have the module acl_log at log level info. Configuring logging is described below in the
Logging Options section.
OPTIONS
Daemon Options
--pidfile[=pidfile]
Causes a file (by default, program.pid) to be created indicating the PID of the
running process. If the pidfile argument is not specified, or if it does not begin
with /, then it is created in /var/run/openvswitch.
If --pidfile is not specified, no pidfile is created.
--overwrite-pidfile
By default, when --pidfile is specified and the specified pidfile already exists
and is locked by a running process, the daemon refuses to start. Specify
--overwrite-pidfile to cause it to instead overwrite the pidfile.
When --pidfile is not specified, this option has no effect.
--detach
Runs this program as a background process. The process forks, and in the child it
starts a new session, closes the standard file descriptors (which has the side
effect of disabling logging to the console), and changes its current directory to
the root (unless --no-chdir is specified). After the child completes its
initialization, the parent exits.
--monitor
Creates an additional process to monitor this program. If it dies due to a signal
that indicates a programming error (SIGABRT, SIGALRM, SIGBUS, SIGFPE, SIGILL,
SIGPIPE, SIGSEGV, SIGXCPU, or SIGXFSZ) then the monitor process starts a new copy
of it. If the daemon dies or exits for another reason, the monitor process exits.
This option is normally used with --detach, but it also functions without it.
--no-chdir
By default, when --detach is specified, the daemon changes its current working
directory to the root directory after it detaches. Otherwise, invoking the daemon
from a carelessly chosen directory would prevent the administrator from unmounting
the file system that holds that directory.
Specifying --no-chdir suppresses this behavior, preventing the daemon from changing
its current working directory. This may be useful for collecting core files, since
it is common behavior to write core dumps into the current working directory and
the root directory is not a good directory to use.
This option has no effect when --detach is not specified.
--no-self-confinement
By default this daemon will try to self-confine itself to work with files under
well-known directories whitelisted at build time. It is better to stick with this
default behavior and not to use this flag unless some other Access Control is used
to confine daemon. Note that in contrast to other access control implementations
that are typically enforced from kernel-space (e.g. DAC or MAC), self-confinement
is imposed from the user-space daemon itself and hence should not be considered as
a full confinement strategy, but instead should be viewed as an additional layer of
security.
--user=user:group
Causes this program to run as a different user specified in user:group, thus
dropping most of the root privileges. Short forms user and :group are also allowed,
with current user or group assumed, respectively. Only daemons started by the root
user accepts this argument.
On Linux, daemons will be granted CAP_IPC_LOCK and CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICES before
dropping root privileges. Daemons that interact with a datapath, such as
ovs-vswitchd, will be granted two additional capabilities, namely CAP_NET_ADMIN and
CAP_NET_RAW. The capability change will apply even if the new user is root.
On Windows, this option is not currently supported. For security reasons,
specifying this option will cause the daemon process not to start.
Logging Options
-v[spec]
--verbose=[spec]
Sets logging levels. Without any spec, sets the log level for every module and
destination to dbg. Otherwise, spec is a list of words separated by spaces or commas
or colons, up to one from each category below:
• A valid module name, as displayed by the vlog/list command on ovs-appctl(8),
limits the log level change to the specified module.
• syslog, console, or file, to limit the log level change to only to the system
log, to the console, or to a file, respectively. (If --detach is specified,
the daemon closes its standard file descriptors, so logging to the console
will have no effect.)
On Windows platform, syslog is accepted as a word and is only useful along
with the --syslog-target option (the word has no effect otherwise).
• off, emer, err, warn, info, or dbg, to control the log level. Messages of the
given severity or higher will be logged, and messages of lower severity will
be filtered out. off filters out all messages. See ovs-appctl(8) for a
definition of each log level.
Case is not significant within spec.
Regardless of the log levels set for file, logging to a file will not take place
unless --log-file is also specified (see below).
For compatibility with older versions of OVS, any is accepted as a word but has no
effect.
-v
--verbose
Sets the maximum logging verbosity level, equivalent to --verbose=dbg.
-vPATTERN:destination:pattern
--verbose=PATTERN:destination:pattern
Sets the log pattern for destination to pattern. Refer to ovs-appctl(8) for a
description of the valid syntax for pattern.
-vFACILITY:facility
--verbose=FACILITY:facility
Sets the RFC5424 facility of the log message. facility can be one of kern, user,
mail, daemon, auth, syslog, lpr, news, uucp, clock, ftp, ntp, audit, alert, clock2,
local0, local1, local2, local3, local4, local5, local6 or local7. If this option is
not specified, daemon is used as the default for the local system syslog and local0
is used while sending a message to the target provided via the --syslog-target
option.
--log-file[=file]
Enables logging to a file. If file is specified, then it is used as the exact name
for the log file. The default log file name used if file is omitted is
/var/log/openvswitch/program.log.
--syslog-target=host:port
Send syslog messages to UDP port on host, in addition to the system syslog. The host
must be a numerical IP address, not a hostname.
--syslog-method=method
Specify method as how syslog messages should be sent to syslog daemon. The following
forms are supported:
• libc, to use the libc syslog() function. This is the default behavior.
Downside of using this options is that libc adds fixed prefix to every message
before it is actually sent to the syslog daemon over /dev/log UNIX domain
socket.
• unix:file, to use a UNIX domain socket directly. It is possible to specify
arbitrary message format with this option. However, rsyslogd 8.9 and older
versions use hard coded parser function anyway that limits UNIX domain socket
use. If you want to use arbitrary message format with older rsyslogd versions,
then use UDP socket to localhost IP address instead.
• udp:ip:port, to use a UDP socket. With this method it is possible to use
arbitrary message format also with older rsyslogd. When sending syslog
messages over UDP socket extra precaution needs to be taken into account, for
example, syslog daemon needs to be configured to listen on the specified UDP
port, accidental iptables rules could be interfering with local syslog traffic
and there are some security considerations that apply to UDP sockets, but do
not apply to UNIX domain sockets.
PKI Options
PKI configuration is required in order to use SSL for the connections to the Northbound
and Southbound databases.
-p privkey.pem
--private-key=privkey.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as identity for outgoing
SSL connections.
-c cert.pem
--certificate=cert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing a certificate that certifies the private key
specified on -p or --private-key to be trustworthy. The certificate must be
signed by the certificate authority (CA) that the peer in SSL connections will
use to verify it.
-C cacert.pem
--ca-cert=cacert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the CA certificate for verifying certificates
presented to this program by SSL peers. (This may be the same certificate that
SSL peers use to verify the certificate specified on -c or --certificate, or
it may be a different one, depending on the PKI design in use.)
-C none
--ca-cert=none
Disables verification of certificates presented by SSL peers. This introduces
a security risk, because it means that certificates cannot be verified to be
those of known trusted hosts.
Other Options
-h
--help
Prints a brief help message to the console.
-V
--version
Prints version information to the console.
CONFIGURATION
ovn-controller retrieves most of its configuration information from the local Open
vSwitch’s ovsdb-server instance. The default location is db.sock in the local Open
vSwitch’s "run" directory. It may be overridden by specifying the ovs-database argument as
an OVSDB active or passive connection method, as described in ovsdb(7).
ovn-controller assumes it gets configuration information from the following keys in the
Open_vSwitch table of the local OVS instance:
external_ids:system-id
The chassis name to use in the Chassis table.
external_ids:hostname
The hostname to use in the Chassis table.
external_ids:ovn-bridge
The integration bridge to which logical ports are attached. The default is
br-int. If this bridge does not exist when ovn-controller starts, it will be
created automatically with the default configuration suggested in
ovn-architecture(7).
external_ids:ovn-remote
The OVN database that this system should connect to for its configuration,
in one of the same forms documented above for the ovs-database.
external_ids:ovn-remote-probe-interval
The inactivity probe interval of the connection to the OVN database, in
milliseconds. If the value is zero, it disables the connection keepalive
feature.
If the value is nonzero, then it will be forced to a value of at least 1000
ms.
external_ids:ovn-encap-type
The encapsulation type that a chassis should use to connect to this node.
Multiple encapsulation types may be specified with a comma-separated list.
Each listed encapsulation type will be paired with ovn-encap-ip.
Supported tunnel types for connecting hypervisors are geneve and stt.
Gateways may use geneve, vxlan, or stt.
Due to the limited amount of metadata in vxlan, the capabilities and
performance of connected gateways will be reduced versus other tunnel
formats.
external_ids:ovn-encap-ip
The IP address that a chassis should use to connect to this node using
encapsulation types specified by external_ids:ovn-encap-type.
external_ids:ovn-bridge-mappings
A list of key-value pairs that map a physical network name to a local ovs
bridge that provides connectivity to that network. An example value mapping
two physical network names to two ovs bridges would be:
physnet1:br-eth0,physnet2:br-eth1.
external_ids:ovn-encap-csum
ovn-encap-csum indicates that encapsulation checksums can be transmitted and
received with reasonable performance. It is a hint to senders transmitting
data to this chassis that they should use checksums to protect OVN metadata.
Set to true to enable or false to disable. Depending on the capabilities of
the network interface card, enabling encapsulation checksum may incur
performance loss. In such cases, encapsulation checksums can be disabled.
external_ids:ovn-cms-options
A list of options that will be consumed by the CMS Plugin and which specific
to this particular chassis. An example would be:
cms_option1,cms_option2:foo.
ovn-controller reads the following values from the Open_vSwitch database of the local OVS
instance:
datapath-type from Bridge table
This value is read from local OVS integration bridge row of Bridge table and
populated in external_ids:datapath-type of the Chassis table in the
OVN_Southbound database.
iface-types from Open_vSwitch table
This value is populated in external_ids:iface-types of the Chassis table in
the OVN_Southbound database.
private_key, certificate, ca_cert, and bootstrap_ca_cert from SSL table
These values provide the SSL configuration used for connecting to the OVN
southbound database server when an SSL connection type is configured via
external_ids:ovn-remote. Note that this SSL configuration can also be
provided via command-line options, the configuration in the database takes
precedence if both are present.
OPEN VSWITCH DATABASE USAGE
ovn-controller uses a number of external_ids keys in the Open vSwitch database to keep
track of ports and interfaces. For proper operation, users should not change or clear
these keys:
external_ids:ovn-chassis-id in the Port table
The presence of this key identifies a tunnel port within the integration
bridge as one created by ovn-controller to reach a remote chassis. Its value
is the chassis ID of the remote chassis.
external_ids:ct-zone-* in the Bridge table
Logical ports and gateway routers are assigned a connection tracking zone by
ovn-controller for stateful services. To keep state across restarts of
ovn-controller, these keys are stored in the integration bridge’s Bridge
table. The name contains a prefix of ct-zone- followed by the name of the
logical port or gateway router’s zone key. The value for this key identifies
the zone used for this port.
external_ids:ovn-localnet-port in the Port table
The presence of this key identifies a patch port as one created by
ovn-controller to connect the integration bridge and another bridge to
implement a localnet logical port. Its value is the name of the logical port
with type set to localnet that the port implements. See
external_ids:ovn-bridge-mappings, above, for more information.
Each localnet logical port is implemented as a pair of patch ports, one in
the integration bridge, one in a different bridge, with the same
external_ids:ovn-localnet-port value.
external_ids:ovn-l2gateway-port in the Port table
The presence of this key identifies a patch port as one created by
ovn-controller to connect the integration bridge and another bridge to
implement a l2gateway logical port. Its value is the name of the logical
port with type set to l2gateway that the port implements. See
external_ids:ovn-bridge-mappings, above, for more information.
Each l2gateway logical port is implemented as a pair of patch ports, one in
the integration bridge, one in a different bridge, with the same
external_ids:ovn-l2gateway-port value.
external-ids:ovn-l3gateway-port in the Port table
This key identifies a patch port as one created by ovn-controller to
implement a l3gateway logical port. Its value is the name of the logical
port with type set to l3gateway. This patch port is similar to the OVN
logical patch port, except that l3gateway port can only be bound to a
paticular chassis.
external-ids:ovn-logical-patch-port in the Port table
This key identifies a patch port as one created by ovn-controller to
implement an OVN logical patch port within the integration bridge. Its value
is the name of the OVN logical patch port that it implements.
RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS
ovs-appctl can send commands to a running ovn-controller process. The currently supported
commands are described below.
exit Causes ovn-controller to gracefully terminate.
ct-zone-list
Lists each local logical port and its connection tracking zone.
inject-pkt microflow
Injects microflow into the connected Open vSwitch instance. microflow must
contain an ingress logical port (inport argument) that is present on the
Open vSwitch instance.
The microflow argument describes the packet whose forwarding is to be
simulated, in the syntax of an OVN logical expression, as described in
ovn-sb(5), to express constraints. The parser understands prerequisites; for
example, if the expression refers to ip4.src, there is no need to explicitly
state ip4 or eth.type == 0x800.