Provided by: openvswitch-testcontroller_3.3.0-1ubuntu3_amd64 
NAME
ovs-testcontroller - simple OpenFlow controller for testing
SYNOPSIS
ovs-testcontroller [options] method [method]...
DESCRIPTION
ovs-testcontroller is a simple OpenFlow controller that manages any number of switches
over the OpenFlow protocol, causing them to function as L2 MAC-learning switches or hubs.
It is suitable for initial testing of OpenFlow networks. It is not a necessary or
desirable part of a production OpenFlow deployment.
ovs-testcontroller controls one or more OpenFlow switches, specified as one or more of the
following OpenFlow connection methods:
pssl:[port][:host]
ptcp:[port][:host]
Listens for OpenFlow connections on port. The default port is 6653. By
default, connections are allowed from any IPv4 address. Specify host as an
IPv4 address or a bracketed IPv6 address (e.g. ptcp:6653:[::1]). On Linux,
use %device to designate a scope for IPv6 link-level addresses, e.g.
ptcp:6653:[fe80::1234%eth0]. DNS names can be used if built with unbound
library. For pssl, the --private-key,--certificate, and --ca-cert options
are mandatory.
punix:file
Listens for OpenFlow connections on the Unix domain server socket named
file.
ssl:host[:port]
tcp:host[:port]
The specified port on the given host, which can be expressed either as a DNS
name (if built with unbound library) or an IP address in IPv4 or IPv6
address format. Wrap IPv6 addresses in square brackets, e.g.
tcp:[::1]:6653. On Linux, use %device to designate a scope for IPv6 link-
level addresses, e.g. tcp:[fe80::1234%eth0]:6653. For ssl, the
--private-key, --certificate, and --ca-cert options are mandatory.
If port is not specified, it defaults to 6653.
unix:file
On POSIX, a Unix domain server socket named file.
On Windows, connect to a local named pipe that is represented by a file
created in the path file to mimic the behavior of a Unix domain socket.
OPTIONS
-n
--noflow
By default, ovs-testcontroller sets up a flow in each OpenFlow switch whenever it
receives a packet whose destination is known due through MAC learning. This option
disables flow setup, so that every packet in the network passes through the
controller.
This option is most useful for debugging. It reduces switching performance, so it
should not be used in production.
--max-idle=secs|permanent
Sets secs as the number of seconds that a flow set up by the controller will remain
in the switch's flow table without any matching packets being seen. If permanent
is specified, which is not recommended, flows will never expire. The default is 60
seconds.
This option has no effect when -n (or --noflow) is in use (because the controller
does not set up flows in that case).
-H
--hub By default, the controller acts as an L2 MAC-learning switch. This option changes
its behavior to that of a hub that floods packets on all but the incoming port.
If -H (or --hub) and -n (or --noflow) are used together, then the cumulative effect
is that every packet passes through the controller and every packet is flooded.
This option is most useful for debugging. It reduces switching performance, so it
should not be used in production.
-w[wildcard_mask]
--wildcards[=wildcard_mask]
By default, ovs-testcontroller sets up exact-match flows. This option allows it to
set up wildcarded flows, which may reduce flow setup latency by causing less
traffic to be sent up to the controller.
The optional wildcard_mask is an OpenFlow wildcard bitmask in hexadecimal that
specifies the fields to wildcard. If no wildcard_mask is specified, the default
value 0x2820F0 is used which specifies L2-only switching and wildcards L3 and L4
fields. Another interesting value is 0x2000EC, which specifies L3-only switching
and wildcards L2 and L4 fields.
This option has no effect when -n (or --noflow) is in use (because the controller
does not set up flows in that case).
-N
--normal
By default, ovs-testcontroller directs packets to a particular port or floods them.
This option causes it to direct non-flooded packets to the OpenFlow OFPP_NORMAL
port. This allows the switch itself to make decisions about packet destinations.
Support for OFPP_NORMAL is optional in OpenFlow, so this option may not well with
some non-Open vSwitch switches.
--mute Prevents ovs-testcontroller from replying to any OpenFlow messages sent to it by
switches.
This option is only for debugging the Open vSwitch implementation of ``fail open''
mode. It must not be used in production.
-q id
--queue=id
By default, ovs-testcontroller uses the default OpenFlow queue for sending packets
and setting up flows. Use one of these options, supplying id as an OpenFlow queue
ID as a decimal number, to instead use that specific queue.
This option is incompatible with -N or --normal and with -H or --hub. If more than
one is specified then this option takes precedence.
This option may be useful for testing or debugging quality of service setups.
-Q port-name:queue-id
--port-queue port-name:queue-id
Configures packets received on the port named port-name (e.g. eth0) to be output on
OpenFlow queue ID queue-id (specified as a decimal number). For the specified
port, this option overrides the default specified on -q or --queue.
This option may be specified any number of times with different port-name
arguments.
This option is incompatible with -N or --normal and with -H or --hub. If more than
one is specified then this option takes precedence.
This option may be useful for testing or debugging quality of service setups.
--with-flows file
When a switch connects, push the flow entries as described in file. Each line in
file is a flow entry in the format described for the add-flows command in the Flow
Syntax section of the ovs-ofctl(8) man page.
Use this option more than once to add flows from multiple files.
Public Key Infrastructure Options
-p privkey.pem
--private-key=privkey.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as ovs-testcontroller's
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 that ovs-testcontroller should
use to verify certificates presented to it 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.
--peer-ca-cert=peer-cacert.pem
Specifies a PEM file that contains one or more additional certificates to send to
SSL peers. peer-cacert.pem should be the CA certificate used to sign
ovs-testcontroller's own certificate, that is, the certificate specified on -c or
--certificate. If ovs-testcontroller's certificate is self-signed, then
--certificate and --peer-ca-cert should specify the same file.
This option is not useful in normal operation, because the SSL peer must already
have the CA certificate for the peer to have any confidence in ovs-testcontroller's
identity. However, this offers a way for a new installation to bootstrap the CA
certificate on its first SSL connection.
Daemon Options
The following options are valid on POSIX based platforms.
--pidfile[=pidfile]
Causes a file (by default, ovs-testcontroller.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, ovs-testcontroller 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 ovs-testcontroller 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 the ovs-testcontroller daemon. If the
daemon 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, ovs-testcontroller changes its current
working directory to the root directory after it detaches. Otherwise, invoking
ovs-testcontroller 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 ovs-testcontroller 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 daemon will try to self-confine itself to work with files under well-
known directories determined during build. 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 Causes ovs-testcontroller 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 are 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 three additional capabilities, namely CAP_NET_ADMIN,
CAP_NET_BROADCAST 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.
-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, ovs-testcontroller 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/ovs-testcontroller.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 how syslog messages should be sent to syslog daemon. Following
forms are supported:
• libc, use libc syslog() function. 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, use 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, use 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.
• null, discards all messages logged to syslog.
The default is taken from the OVS_SYSLOG_METHOD environment variable; if it is
unset, the default is libc.
--unixctl=socket
Sets the name of the control socket on which ovs-testcontroller listens for runtime
management commands (see RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS, below). If socket does not
begin with /, it is interpreted as relative to /var/run/openvswitch. If --unixctl
is not used at all, the default socket is
/var/run/openvswitch/ovs-testcontroller.pid.ctl, where pid is ovs-testcontroller's
process ID.
On Windows a local named pipe is used to listen for runtime management commands. A
file is created in the absolute path as pointed by socket or if --unixctl is not
used at all, a file is created as ovs-testcontroller.ctl in the configured
OVS_RUNDIR directory. The file exists just to mimic the behavior of a Unix domain
socket.
Specifying none for socket disables the control socket feature.
-h
--help Prints a brief help message to the console.
-V
--version
Prints version information to the console.
-O [version[,version]...]
--protocols=[version[,version]...]
Sets the OpenFlow protocol versions that are allowed when establishing an OpenFlow
session.
These protocol versions are enabled by default:
• OpenFlow10, for OpenFlow 1.0.
The following protocol versions are generally supported, but for compatibility with older
versions of Open vSwitch they are not enabled by default:
• OpenFlow11, for OpenFlow 1.1.
• OpenFlow12, for OpenFlow 1.2.
• OpenFlow13, for OpenFlow 1.3.
• OpenFlow14, for OpenFlow 1.4.
• OpenFlow15, for OpenFlow 1.5.
EXAMPLES
To bind locally to port 6653 (the default) and wait for incoming connections from OpenFlow
switches:
% ovs-testcontroller ptcp:
SEE ALSO
ovs-appctl(8), ovs-ofctl(8), ovs-dpctl(8)