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[:destination[:level]]]]...
[--verbose[=module[:destination[:level]]]]...
[--log-file[=file]]

Public key infrastructure options:

[--private-key=privkey.pem]
[--certificate=cert.pem]
[--ca-cert=cacert.pem]
[--bootstrap-ca-cert=cacert.pem]
[--peer-ca-cert=peer-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: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 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]: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 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 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

Runs ovsdb-server 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. 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.

--user

Causes ovsdb-server 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 interact with 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 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.

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 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, ovsdb-server 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/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.

--syslog-method=method

Specify method how syslog messages should be sent to syslog daemon. Following forms are supported:

• libc, use 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, 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.

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.

--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 ovsdb-server's own certificate, that is, the certificate specified on -c or --certificate. If ovsdb-server'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 ovsdb-server's identity. However, this offers a way for a new installation to bootstrap the CA certificate on its first SSL connection.

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 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.
• 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:destination:pattern

Sets the log pattern for destination 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/list-pattern

Lists logging patterns used for each destination.

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.

The definition of <error> allows for implementation extensions. Currently ovsdb-server uses the following additional "error" strings which might change in later releases):

syntax error or unknown column

The request could not be parsed as an OVSDB request. An additional "syntax" member, whose value is a string that contains JSON, may narrow down the particular syntax that could not be parsed.

internal error

The request triggered a bug in ovsdb-server.

ovsdb error

A map or set contains a duplicate key.

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.

5.1. Notation

For <condition>, RFC 7047 only allows the use of !=, ==, includes, and excludes operators with set types. Open vSwitch 2.4 and later extend <condition> to allow the use of <, <=, >=, and > operators with columns with type ``set of 0 or 1 integer'' and ``set of 0 or 1 real''. These conditions evaluate to false when the column is empty, and otherwise as described in RFC 7047 for integer and real types.