NAME¶
ovsdb-server - Open vSwitch database server
SYNOPSIS¶
ovsdb-server [
database]... [
--remote=remote]... [
--run=command]
- Daemon options:
- [--pidfile[=pidfile]] [ --overwrite-pidfile] [
--detach] [ --no-chdir]
- Service options:
- [--service] [ --service-monitor]
- Logging options:
- [-v[module[:facility[:level]]]]...
[
--verbose[=module[:facility[:level]]]]...
[ --log-file[=file]]
- Public key infrastructure options:
- [--private-key=privkey.pem]
[ --certificate=cert.pem]
[ --ca-cert=cacert.pem]
[ --bootstrap-ca-cert=cacert.pem]
- Runtime management options:
- --unixctl=socket
- Common options:
- [-h | --help] [ -V | --version]
DESCRIPTION¶
The
ovsdb-server program provides RPC interfaces to one or more Open
vSwitch databases (OVSDBs). It supports JSON-RPC client connections over
active or passive TCP/IP or Unix domain sockets.
Each OVSDB file may be specified on the command line as
database. If none
is specified, the default is
/etc/openvswitch/conf.db. The database
files must already have been created and initialized using, for example,
ovsdb-tool create.
OPTIONS¶
- --remote=remote
- Adds remote as a connection method used by ovsdb-server.
remote must take one of the following forms:
- 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:6632:[::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:6632:[::1].
- punix:file
- On POSIX, listen on the Unix domain server socket named file for a
connection.
- On Windows, listen on a kernel chosen TCP port on the localhost. The
kernel chosen TCP port value is written in file.
- 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]:6632. 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
IPv4 or IPv6 address. If ip is an IPv6 address, then wrap ip
with square brackets, e.g.: tcp:[::1]:6632.
- unix:file
- On POSIX, connect to the Unix domain server socket named file.
- On Windows, connect to a localhost TCP port whose value is written in
file.
- db:db,table,column
- Reads additional connection methods from column in all of the rows
in table within db. As the contents of column
changes, ovsdb-server also adds and drops connection methods
accordingly.
- If column's type is string or set of strings, then the connection
methods are taken directly from the column. The connection methods in the
column must have one of the forms described above.
- If column's type is UUID or set of UUIDs and references a table,
then each UUID is looked up in the referenced table to obtain a row. The
following columns in the row, if present and of the correct type,
configure a connection method. Any additional columns are ignored.
- target (string)
- Connection method, in one of the forms described above. This column is
mandatory: if it is missing or empty then no connection method can be
configured.
- max_backoff (integer)
- Maximum number of milliseconds to wait between connection attempts.
- inactivity_probe (integer)
- Maximum number of milliseconds of idle time on connection to client before
sending an inactivity probe message.
- It is an error for column to have another type.
- To connect or listen on multiple connection methods, use multiple
--remote options.
- --run=command]
- Ordinarily ovsdb-server runs forever, or until it is told to exit
(see RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS below). With this option,
ovsdb-server instead starts a shell subprocess running
command. When the subprocess terminates, ovsdb-server also
exits gracefully. If the subprocess exits normally with exit code 0, then
ovsdb-server exits with exit code 0 also; otherwise, it exits with
exit code 1.
- This option can be useful where a database server is needed only to run a
single command, e.g.: ovsdb-server --remote=punix:socket
--run='ovsdb-client dump unix:socket Open_vSwitch'
- This option is not supported on Windows platform.
Daemon Options¶
The following options are valid on POSIX based platforms.
- --pidfile[=pidfile]
- Causes a file (by default, ovsdb-server.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, ovsdb-server
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
- Causes ovsdb-server to detach itself from the foreground session
and run as a background process. ovsdb-server detaches only after
it starts listening on all configured remotes.
- --monitor
- Creates an additional process to monitor the ovsdb-server 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, ovsdb-server changes
its current working directory to the root directory after it detaches.
Otherwise, invoking ovsdb-server 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
ovsdb-server 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.
Service Options¶
The following options are valid only on Windows platform.
- --service
- Causes ovsdb-server to run as a service in the background. The
service should already have been created through external tools like
SC.exe.
- --service-monitor
- Causes the ovsdb-server service to be automatically restarted by
the Windows services manager if the service dies or exits for unexpected
reasons.
- When --service is not specified, this option has no effect.
Logging Options¶
- -v[spec]
-
- --verbose=[spec]
- Sets logging levels. Without any spec, sets the log level for every
module and facility 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.
- 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:facility:pattern
-
- --verbose=PATTERN:facility:pattern
- Sets the log pattern for facility to pattern. Refer to
ovs-appctl(8) for a description of the valid syntax for
pattern.
- --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/ovsdb-server.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.
Public Key Infrastructure Options¶
The options described below for configuring the SSL public key infrastructure
accept a special syntax for obtaining their configuration from the database.
If any of these options is given
db:db,table, column as its argument,
then the actual file name is read from the specified
column in
table within the
db database. The
column must have type
string or set of strings. The first nonempty string in the table is taken as
the file name. (This means that ordinarily there should be at most one row in
table.)
- -p privkey.pem
-
- --private-key=privkey.pem
- Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as
ovsdb-server'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
ovsdb-server 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.
- --bootstrap-ca-cert=cacert.pem
- When cacert.pem exists, this option has the same effect as
-C or --ca-cert. If it does not exist, then
ovsdb-server will attempt to obtain the CA certificate from the SSL
peer on its first SSL connection and save it to the named PEM file. If it
is successful, it will immediately drop the connection and reconnect, and
from then on all SSL connections must be authenticated by a certificate
signed by the CA certificate thus obtained.
- This option exposes the SSL connection to a man-in-the-middle
attack obtaining the initial CA certificate, but it may be useful
for bootstrapping.
- This option is only useful if the SSL peer sends its CA certificate as
part of the SSL certificate chain. The SSL protocol does not require the
server to send the CA certificate.
- This option is mutually exclusive with -C and
--ca-cert.
Other Options¶
- --unixctl=socket
- Sets the name of the control socket on which ovsdb-server 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/ovsdb-server. pid.ctl, where
pid is ovsdb-server's process ID.
- On Windows, uses a kernel chosen TCP port on the localhost to listen for
runtime management commands. The kernel chosen TCP port value is written
in a file whose absolute path is pointed by socket. If
--unixctl is not used at all, the file is created as
ovsdb-server.ctl in the configured OVS_RUNDIR
directory.
- 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.
RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS¶
ovs-appctl(8) can send commands to a running
ovsdb-server process.
The currently supported commands are described below.
OVSDB-SERVER COMMANDS¶
These commands are specific to
ovsdb-server.
- exit
- Causes ovsdb-server to gracefully terminate.
- ovsdb-server/compact [db]...
- Compacts each database db in-place. If no db is specified,
compacts every database in-place. Databases are also automatically
compacted occasionally.
- ovsdb-server/reconnect
- Makes ovsdb-server drop all of the JSON-RPC connections to database
clients and reconnect.
- This command might be useful for debugging issues with database
clients.
- ovsdb-server/add-remote remote
- Adds a remote, as if --remote=remote had been specified on
the ovsdb-server command line. (If remote is already a
remote, this command succeeds without changing the configuration.)
- ovsdb-server/remove-remote remote
- Removes the specified remote from the configuration, failing with
an error if remote is not configured as a remote. This command only
works with remotes that were named on --remote or
ovsdb-server/add-remote, that is, it will not remove remotes added
indirectly because they were read from the database by configuring a
db: db,table,column remote. (You
can remove a database source with ovsdb-server/remove-remote
db:db,table,column, but
not individual remotes found indirectly through the database.)
- ovsdb-server/list-remotes
- Outputs a list of the currently configured remotes named on
--remote or ovsdb-server/add-remote, that is, it does not
list remotes added indirectly because they were read from the database by
configuring a db:db,table,column
remote.
- ovsdb-server/add-db database
- Adds the database to the running ovsdb-server. The database
file must already have been created and initialized using, for example,
ovsdb-tool create.
- ovsdb-server/remove-db database
- Removes database from the running ovsdb-server.
database must be a database name as listed by
ovsdb-server/list-dbs.
- If a remote has been configured that points to the specified
database (e.g. --remote=db:database,... on the
command line), then it will be disabled until another database with the
same name is added again (with ovsdb-server/add-db).
- Any public key infrastructure options specified through this database
(e.g. --private-key=db:database,... on the command line)
will be disabled until another database with the same name is added again
(with ovsdb-server/add-db).
- ovsdb-server/list-dbs
- Outputs a list of the currently configured databases added either through
the command line or through the ovsdb-server/add-db command.
VLOG COMMANDS¶
These commands manage
ovsdb-server's logging settings.
- vlog/set [spec]
- Sets logging levels. Without any spec, sets the log level for every
module and facility 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.
- 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 ovsdb-server was invoked with the
--log-file option.
- For compatibility with older versions of OVS, any is accepted as a
word but has no effect.
- vlog/set PATTERN:facility:pattern
- Sets the log pattern for facility to pattern. Refer to
ovs-appctl(8) for a description of the valid syntax for
pattern.
- vlog/list
- Lists the supported logging modules and their current levels.
- vlog/reopen
- Causes ovsdb-server to close and reopen its log file. (This is
useful after rotating log files, to cause a new log file to be used.)
- This has no effect unless ovsdb-server was invoked with the
--log-file option.
- vlog/disable-rate-limit [module]...
-
- vlog/enable-rate-limit [module]...
- By default, ovsdb-server limits the rate at which certain messages
can be logged. When a message would appear more frequently than the limit,
it is suppressed. This saves disk space, makes logs easier to read, and
speeds up execution, but occasionally troubleshooting requires more
detail. Therefore, vlog/disable-rate-limit allows rate limits to be
disabled at the level of an individual log module. Specify one or more
module names, as displayed by the vlog/list command. Specifying
either no module names at all or the keyword any disables rate
limits for every log module.
- The vlog/enable-rate-limit command, whose syntax is the same as
vlog/disable-rate-limit, can be used to re-enable a rate limit that
was previously disabled.
MEMORY COMMANDS¶
These commands report memory usage.
- memory/show
- Displays some basic statistics about ovsdb-server's memory usage.
ovsdb-server also logs this information soon after startup and
periodically as its memory consumption grows.
COVERAGE COMMANDS¶
These commands manage
ovsdb-server's ``coverage counters,'' which count
the number of times particular events occur during a daemon's runtime. In
addition to these commands,
ovsdb-server automatically logs coverage
counter values, at
INFO level, when it detects that the daemon's main
loop takes unusually long to run.
Coverage counters are useful mainly for performance analysis and debugging.
- coverage/show
- Displays the averaged per-second rates for the last few seconds, the last
minute and the last hour, and the total counts of all of the coverage
counters.
SPECIFICATIONS¶
ovsdb-server implements the Open vSwitch Database (OVSDB) protocol
specified in RFC 7047, with the following clarifications:
- 3.1. JSON Usage
- RFC 4627 says that names within a JSON object should be unique. The Open
vSwitch JSON parser discards all but the last value for a name that is
specified more than once.
- 3.2. Schema Format
- RFC 7047 requires the "version" field in
<database-schema>. Current versions of ovsdb-server allow it
to be omitted (future versions are likely to require it).
- 4. Wire Protocol
- The original OVSDB specifications included the following reason, omitted
from RFC 7047, to operate JSON-RPC directly over a stream instead of over
HTTP:
- •
- JSON-RPC is a peer-to-peer protocol, but HTTP is a client-server protocol,
which is a poor match. Thus, JSON-RPC over HTTP requires the client to
periodically poll the server to receive server requests.
- •
- HTTP is more complicated than stream connections and doesn't provide any
corresponding advantage.
- •
- The JSON-RPC specification for HTTP transport is incomplete.
- 4.1.5. Monitor
- For backward compatibility, ovsdb-server currently permits a single
<monitor-request> to be used instead of an array; it is treated as a
single-element array. Future versions of ovsdb-server might remove
this compatibility feature.
- Because the <json-value> parameter is used to match subsequent
update notifications (see below) to the request, it must be unique among
all active monitors. ovsdb-server rejects attempt to create two
monitors with the same identifier.
- 6. IANA Considerations
- ovsdb-server currently defaults to its historical port number 6632.
Future versions will adopt IANA-assigned port 6640 as default.
SEE ALSO¶
ovsdb-tool(1).