Ubuntu Manpage: ovs-ctl - OVS startup helper script

Provided by: openvswitch-switch_2.9.8-0ubuntu0.18.04.5_amd64

NAME

       ovs-ctl - OVS startup helper script

SYNOPSIS

       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

       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 of ovs-ctl's commands 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
--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
--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 to 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 section 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 the other_config:transient value 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
--ovs-vswitchd-priority=niceness
Sets the nice(1) level used for each daemon. All of them default to -10.

--ovsdb-server-wrapper=wrapper
--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 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 separatetly 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
       --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

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

       By  default,  ovs-ctl  will control the ovsdb-server, and the 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

       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

       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

       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
       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

       The  files debian/openvswitch-switch.init and xenserver/etc_init.d_openvswitch in the Open vSwitch source
       distribution are good examples of how to use ovs-ctl.