ovn-controller(8) - Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ACL LOGGING | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION | OPEN VSWITCH DATABASE USAGE | RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS | COLOPHON

ovn-controller(8)            Open vSwitch Manual           ovn-controller(8)

NAME         top

       ovn-controller - Open Virtual Network local controller

SYNOPSIS         top

       ovn-controller [options] [ovs-database]

DESCRIPTION         top

       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         top

       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         top

   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 /usr/local/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
            /usr/local/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         top

       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 in one of the
       following forms:

              ssl:ip:port
                     The specified SSL port on the host at the given ip,
                     which must be expressed as an IP address (not a DNS
                     name) in IPv4 or IPv6 address format. If ip is an IPv6
                     address, then wrap ip with square brackets, e.g.:
                     ssl:[::1]:6640. The --private-key, --certificate, and
                     --ca-cert options are mandatory when this form is used.

              tcp:ip:port
                     Connect to the given TCP port on ip, where ip can be an
                     IPv4 or IPv6 address. If ip is an IPv6 address, then
                     wrap ip with square brackets, e.g.: tcp:[::1]:6640.

              unix:file
                     On POSIX, connect to the 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.

              pssl:port:ip
                     Listen on the given SSL port for a connection. By
                     default, connections are not bound to a particular
                     local IP address and it listens only on IPv4 (but not
                     IPv6) addresses, but specifying ip limits connections
                     to those from the given ip, either IPv4 or IPv6
                     address. If ip is an IPv6 address, then wrap ip with
                     square brackets, e.g.: pssl:6640:[::1]. The
                     --private-key, --certificate, and --ca-cert options are
                     mandatory when this form is used.

              ptcp:port:ip
                     Listen on the given TCP port for a connection. By
                     default, connections are not bound to a particular
                     local IP address and it listens only on IPv4 (but not
                     IPv6) addresses, but ip may be specified to listen only
                     for connections to the given ip, either IPv4 or IPv6
                     address. If ip is an IPv6 address, then wrap ip with
                     square brackets, e.g.: ptcp:6640:[::1].

              punix:file
                     On POSIX, listen on the Unix domain server socket named
                     file for a connection.

                     On Windows, listen on a local named pipe. A file is
                     created in the path file to mimic the behavior of a
                     Unix domain socket.

       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.

       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         top

       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         top

       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.

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 bugs@openvswitch.org.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs.git⟩ on 2018-02-02.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the repos‐
       itory was 2018-02-01.)  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 man-pages@man7.org

Open vSwitch 2.8.90            ovn-controller              ovn-controller(8)

Pages that refer to this page: ovn-sb(5)ovn-architecture(7)