ovs-vswitchd

package: openvswitch

title: ovs-vswitchd(8)

summary: Open vSwitch daemon

text:
# ovs-vswitchd(8)

## NAME
ovs-vswitchd - Open vSwitch daemon

## SYNOPSIS
ovs-vswitchd [database]

## DESCRIPTION
A daemon that manages and controls any number of Open vSwitch switches on the local machine.

The database argument specifies how ovs-vswitchd connects to ovsdb-server. database may be an OVSDB active or passive connection method, as described in ovsdb(7). The default is unix:/run/openvswitch/db.sock.

ovs-vswitchd retrieves its configuration from database at startup. It sets up Open vSwitch datapaths and then operates switching across each bridge described in its configuration files. As the database changes, ovs-vswitchd automatically updates its configuration to match.

ovs-vswitchd switches may be configured with any of the following features:

- L2 switching with MAC learning.

- NIC bonding with automatic fail-over and source MAC-based TX load balancing ("SLB").

- 802.1Q VLAN support.

- Port mirroring, with optional VLAN tagging.

- NetFlow v5 flow logging.

- sFlow(R) monitoring.

- Connectivity to an external OpenFlow controller, such as NOX.

Only a single instance of ovs-vswitchd is intended to run at a time. A single ovs-vswitchd can manage any number of switch instances, up to the maximum number of supported Open vSwitch datapaths.

ovs-vswitchd does all the necessary management of Open vSwitch datapaths itself. Thus, ovs-dpctl(8) (and its userspace datapath counterparts accessible via ovs-appctl dpctl/command) are not needed with ovs-vswitchd and should not be used because they can interfere with its operation. These tools are still useful for diagnostics.

An Open vSwitch datapath kernel module must be loaded for ovs-vswitchd to be useful. Refer to the documentation for instructions on how to build and load the Open vSwitch kernel module.

## OPTIONS
--mlockall

Causes ovs-vswitchd to call the mlockall() function, to attempt to lock all of its process memory into physical RAM, preventing the kernel from paging any of its memory to disk. This helps to avoid networking interruptions due to system memory pressure.

Some systems do not support mlockall() at all, and other systems only allow privileged users, such as the superuser, to use it. ovs-vswitchd emits a log message if mlockall() is unavailable or unsuccessful.

### DPDK Options
For details on initializing ovs-vswitchd to use DPDK ports, refer to the documentation or ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5).

### DPDK HW Access Options
--hw-rawio-access

Tells ovs-vswitchd to retain the CAP_SYS_RAWIO capability, to allow userspace drivers access to raw hardware memory. This will also allow the ovs-vswitchd daemon to call iopl() and ioperm() functions as well as access memory devices to set port access. This is a very powerful capability, so generally only enable as needed for specific hardware (for example mlx5 with full hardware offload via rte_flow).

### Daemon Options
The following options are valid on POSIX based platforms.

--pidfile[=pidfile]

Causes a file (by default, ovs-vswitchd.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 /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-vswitchd 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-vswitchd 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. ovs-vswitchd detaches only after it has connected to the database, retrieved the initial configuration, and set up that configuration.

--monitor

Creates an additional process to monitor the ovs-vswitchd 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-vswitchd changes its current working directory to the root directory after it detaches. Otherwise, invoking ovs-vswitchd 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-vswitchd 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-vswitchd 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.

### Service Options
The following options are valid only on Windows platform.

--service

Causes ovs-vswitchd 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 ovs-vswitchd 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.

### Public Key Infrastructure Options
-p privkey.pem

--private-key=privkey.pem

Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as ovs-vswitchd'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-vswitchd 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 ovs-vswitchd 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 ovs-vswitchd's own certificate, that is, the certificate specified on -c or --certificate. If ovs-vswitchd'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-vswitchd's identity. However, this offers a way for a new installation to bootstrap the CA certificate on its first SSL connection.

### 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, ovs-vswitchd 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-vswitchd.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.

### Other Options
--unixctl=socket

Sets the name of the control socket on which ovs-vswitchd listens for runtime management commands (see RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS, below). If socket does not begin with /, it is interpreted as relative to /run/openvswitch. If --unixctl is not used at all, the default socket is /run/openvswitch/ovs-vswitchd.pid.ctl, where pid is ovs-vswitchd'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-vswitchd.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.

## RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS
ovs-appctl(8) can send commands to a running ovs-vswitchd process. The currently supported commands are described below. The command descriptions assume an understanding of how to configure Open vSwitch.

### GENERAL COMMANDS
exit --cleanup

Causes ovs-vswitchd to gracefully terminate. If --cleanup is specified, deletes flows from datapaths and releases other datapath resources configured by ovs-vswitchd. Otherwise, datapath flows and other resources remains undeleted. Resources of datapaths that are integrated into ovs-vswitchd (e.g. the netdev datapath type) are always released regardless of --cleanup except for ports with internal type. Use --cleanup to release internal ports too.

qos/show-types interface

Queries the interface for a list of Quality of Service types that are configurable via Open vSwitch for the given interface.

qos/show interface

Queries the kernel for Quality of Service configuration and statistics associated with the given interface.

bfd/show [interface]

Displays detailed information about Bidirectional Forwarding Detection configured on interface. If interface is not specified, then displays detailed information about all interfaces with BFD enabled.

bfd/set-forwarding [interface] status

Force the fault status of the BFD module on interface (or all interfaces if none is given) to be status. status can be "true", "false", or "normal" which reverts to the standard behavior.

cfm/show [interface]

Displays detailed information about Connectivity Fault Management configured on interface. If interface is not specified, then displays detailed information about all interfaces with CFM enabled.

cfm/set-fault [interface] status

Force the fault status of the CFM module on interface (or all interfaces if none is given) to be status. status can be "true", "false", or "normal" which reverts to the standard behavior.

stp/tcn [bridge]

Forces a topology change event on bridge if it's running STP. This may cause it to send Topology Change Notifications to its peers and flush its MAC table. If no bridge is given, forces a topology change event on all bridges.

stp/show [bridge]

Displays detailed information about spanning tree on the bridge. If bridge is not specified, then displays detailed information about all bridges with STP enabled.

rstp/tcn [bridge]

Forces a topology change event on bridge if it's running RSTP. This may cause it to send Topology Change Notifications to its peers and flush its MAC table. If no bridge is given, forces a topology change event on all bridges.

rstp/show [bridge]

Displays detailed information about rapid spanning tree on the bridge. If bridge is not specified, then displays detailed information about all bridges with RSTP enabled.

### BRIDGE COMMANDS
These commands manage bridges.

fdb/add bridge port vlan mac

Adds mac address to a port and vlan on a bridge. This utility can be used to pre-populate fdb table without relying on dynamic mac learning.

fdb/del bridge vlan mac

Deletes mac address from a port and vlan on a bridge.

fdb/flush [bridge]

Flushes bridge MAC address learning table, or all learning tables if no bridge is given.

fdb/show bridge

Lists each MAC address/VLAN pair learned by the specified bridge, along with the port on which it was learned and the age of the entry, in seconds.

fdb/stats-clear [bridge]

Clear bridge MAC address learning table statistics, or all statistics if no bridge is given.

fdb/stats-show bridge

Show MAC address learning table statistics for the specified bridge.

mdb/flush [bridge]

Flushes bridge multicast snooping table, or all snooping tables if no bridge is given.

mdb/show bridge

Lists each multicast group/VLAN pair learned by the specified bridge, along with the port on which it was learned and the age of the entry, in seconds.

bridge/reconnect [bridge]

Makes bridge drop all of its OpenFlow controller connections and reconnect. If bridge is not specified, then all bridges drop their controller connections and reconnect.

This command might be useful for debugging OpenFlow controller issues.

bridge/dump-flows [--offload-stats] bridge

Lists all flows in bridge, including those normally hidden to commands such as ovs-ofctl dump-flows. Flows set up by mechanisms such as in-band control and fail-open are hidden from the controller since it is not allowed to modify or override them. If --offload-stats are specified then also list statistics for offloaded packets and bytes, which are a subset of the total packets and bytes.

### BOND COMMANDS
These commands manage bonded ports on an Open vSwitch's bridges. To understand some of these commands, it is important to understand a detail of the bonding implementation called ``source load balancing'' (SLB). Instead of directly assigning Ethernet source addresses to members, the bonding implementation computes a function that maps an 48-bit Ethernet source addresses into an 8-bit value (a ``MAC hash'' value). All of the Ethernet addresses that map to a single 8-bit value are then assigned to a single member.

bond/list

Lists all of the bonds, and their members, on each bridge.

bond/show [port]

Lists all of the bond-specific information (updelay, downdelay, time until the next rebalance) about the given bonded port, or all bonded ports if no port is given. Also lists information about each members: whether it is enabled or disabled, the time to completion of an updelay or downdelay if one is in progress, whether it is the active member, the hashes assigned to the member. Any LACP information related to this bond may be found using the lacp/show command.

bond/migrate port hash member

Only valid for SLB bonds. Assigns a given MAC hash to a new member. port specifies the bond port, hash the MAC hash to be migrated (as a decimal number between 0 and 255), and member the new member to be assigned.

The reassignment is not permanent: rebalancing or fail-over will cause the MAC hash to be shifted to a new member in the usual manner.

A MAC hash cannot be migrated to a disabled member.

bond/set-active-member port member

Sets member as the active member on port. member must currently be enabled.

The setting is not permanent: a new active member will be selected if member becomes disabled.

bond/enable-member port member

bond/disable-member port member

Enables (or disables) member on the given bond port, skipping any updelay (or downdelay).

This setting is not permanent: it persists only until the carrier status of member changes.

bond/hash mac [vlan] [basis]

Returns the hash value which would be used for mac with vlan and basis if specified.

lacp/show [port]

Lists all of the LACP related information about the given port: active or passive, aggregation key, system id, and system priority. Also lists information about each member: whether it is enabled or disabled, whether it is attached or detached, port id and priority, actor information, and partner information. If port is not specified, then displays detailed information about all interfaces with CFM enabled.

lacp/stats-show [port]

Lists various stats about LACP PDUs (number of RX/TX PDUs, bad PDUs received) and member state (number of times its state expired/defaulted and carrier status changed) for the given port. If port is not specified, then displays stats of all interfaces with LACP enabled.

### DPCTL DATAPATH DEBUGGING COMMANDS
The primary way to configure ovs-vswitchd is through the Open vSwitch database, e.g. using ovs-vsctl(8). These commands provide a debugging interface for managing datapaths. They implement the same features (and syntax) as ovs-dpctl(8). Unlike ovs-dpctl(8), these commands work with datapaths that are integrated into ovs-vswitchd (e.g. the netdev datapath type).

Do not use commands to add or remove or modify datapaths if ovs-vswitchd is running because this interferes with ovs-vswitchd's own datapath management.

dpctl/add-dp dp [netdev[,option]...]

Creates datapath dp, with a local port also named dp. This will fail if a network device dp already exists.

If netdevs are specified, ovs-vswitchd adds them to the new datapath, just as if add-if was specified.

dpctl/del-dp dp

Deletes datapath dp. If dp is associated with any network devices, they are automatically removed.

dpctl/add-if dp netdev[,option]...

Adds each netdev to the set of network devices datapath dp monitors, where dp is the name of an existing datapath, and netdev is the name of one of the host's network devices, e.g. eth0. Once a network device has been added to a datapath, the datapath has complete ownership of the network device's traffic and the network device appears silent to the rest of the system.

A netdev may be followed by a comma-separated list of options. The following options are currently supported:

type=type

Specifies the type of port to add. The default type is system.

port_no=port

Requests a specific port number within the datapath. If this option is not specified then one will be automatically assigned.

key=value

Adds an arbitrary key-value option to the port's configuration.

ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5) documents the available port types and options.

dpctl/set-if dp port[,option]...

Reconfigures each port in dp as specified. An option of the form key=value adds the specified key-value option to the port or overrides an existing key's value. An option of the form key=, that is, without a value, deletes the key-value named key. The type and port number of a port cannot be changed, so type and port_no are only allowed if they match the existing configuration.

dpctl/del-if dp netdev...

Removes each netdev from the list of network devices datapath dp monitors.

dpctl/dump-dps

Prints the name of each configured datapath on a separate line.

dpctl/show [-s | --statistics] [dp...]

Prints a summary of configured datapaths, including their datapath numbers and a list of ports connected to each datapath. (The local port is identified as port 0.) If -s or --statistics is specified, then packet and byte counters are also printed for each port.

The datapath numbers consists of flow stats and mega flow mask stats.

The "lookups" row displays three stats related to flow lookup triggered by processing incoming packets in the datapath. "hit" displays number of packets matches existing flows. "missed" displays the number of packets not matching any existing flow and require user space processing. "lost" displays number of packets destined for user space process but subsequently dropped before reaching userspace. The sum of "hit" and "miss" equals to the total number of packets datapath processed.

The "flows" row displays the number of flows in datapath.

The "masks" row displays the mega flow mask stats. This row is omitted for datapath not implementing mega flow. "hit" displays the total number of masks visited for matching incoming packets. "total" displays number of masks in the datapath. "hit/pkt" displays the average number of masks visited per packet; the ratio between "hit" and total number of packets processed by the datapath.

If one or more datapaths are specified, information on only those datapaths are displayed. Otherwise, ovs-vswitchd displays information about all configured datapaths.

### DATAPATH FLOW TABLE DEBUGGING COMMANDS
The following commands are primarily useful for debugging Open vSwitch. The flow table entries (both matches and actions) that they work with are not OpenFlow flow entries. Instead, they are different and considerably simpler flows maintained by the Open vSwitch kernel module. Do not use commands to add or remove or modify datapath flows if ovs-vswitchd is running because it interferes with ovs-vswitchd's own datapath flow management. Use ovs-ofctl(8), instead, to work with OpenFlow flow entries.

The dp argument to each of these commands is optional when exactly one datapath exists, in which case that datapath is the default. When multiple datapaths exist, then a datapath name is required.

dpctl/dump-flows [-m | --more] [--names | --no-names] [dp] [filter=filter] [type=type] [pmd=pmd]

Prints to the console all flow entries in datapath dp's flow table. Without -m or --more, output omits match fields that a flow wildcards entirely; with -m or --more, output includes all wildcarded fields.

If filter=filter is specified, only displays the flows that match the filter. filter is a flow in the form similar to that accepted by ovs-ofctl(8)'s add-flow command. (This is not an OpenFlow flow: besides other differences, it never contains wildcards.) The filter is also useful to match wildcarded fields in the datapath flow. As an example, filter='tcp,tp_src=100' will match the datapath flow containing 'tcp(src=80/0xff00,dst=8080/0xff)'.

If pmd=pmd is specified, only displays flows of the specified pmd. Using pmd=-1 will restrict the dump to flows from the main thread. This option is only supported by the userspace datapath.

If type=type is specified, only displays flows of the specified types. This option supported only for ovs-appctl dpctl/dump-flows. type is a comma separated list, which can contain any of the following:

ovs - displays flows handled in the ovs dp

tc - displays flows handled in the tc dp

dpdk - displays flows fully offloaded by dpdk

offloaded - displays flows offloaded to the HW

non-offloaded - displays flows not offloaded to the HW

partially-offloaded - displays flows where only part of their proccessing is done in HW

all - displays all the types of flows

By default all the types of flows are displayed. ovs-dpctl always acts as if the type was ovs.

dpctl/add-flow [dp] flow actions

dpctl/mod-flow [--clear] [--may-create] [-s | --statistics] [dp] flow actions

Adds or modifies a flow in dp's flow table that, when a packet matching flow arrives, causes actions to be executed.

The add-flow command succeeds only if flow does not already exist in dp. Contrariwise, mod-flow without --may-create only modifies the actions for an existing flow. With --may-create, mod-flow will add a new flow or modify an existing one.

If -s or --statistics is specified, then mod-flow prints the modified flow's statistics. A flow's statistics are the number of packets and bytes that have passed through the flow, the elapsed time since the flow last processed a packet (if ever), and (for TCP flows) the union of the TCP flags processed through the flow.

With --clear, mod-flow zeros out the flow's statistics. The statistics printed if -s or --statistics is also specified are those from just before clearing the statistics.

NOTE: flow and actions do not match the syntax used with ovs-ofctl(8)'s add-flow command.

Usage Examples

Forward ARP between ports 1 and 2 on datapath myDP:

ovs-dpctl add-flow myDP \

"in_port(1),eth(),eth_type(0x0806),arp()" 2

ovs-dpctl add-flow myDP \

"in_port(2),eth(),eth_type(0x0806),arp()" 1

Forward all IPv4 traffic between two addresses on ports 1 and 2:

ovs-dpctl add-flow myDP \

"in_port(1),eth(),eth_type(0x800),\

ipv4(src=172.31.110.4,dst=172.31.110.5)" 2

ovs-dpctl add-flow myDP \

"in_port(2),eth(),eth_type(0x800),\

ipv4(src=172.31.110.5,dst=172.31.110.4)" 1

dpctl/add-flows [dp] file

dpctl/mod-flows [dp] file

dpctl/del-flows [dp] file

Reads flow entries from file (or stdin if file is -) and adds, modifies, or deletes each entry to the datapath. Each flow specification (e.g., each line in file) may start with add, modify, or delete keyword to specify whether a flow is to be added, modified, or deleted. A flow specification without one of these keywords is treated based on the used command. All flow modifications are executed as individual transactions in the order specified.

dpctl/del-flow [-s | --statistics] [dp] flow

Deletes the flow from dp's flow table that matches flow. If -s or --statistics is specified, then del-flow prints the deleted flow's statistics.

dpctl/get-flow [dp] ufid:ufid [-m | --more] [--names | --no-names]

Fetches the flow from dp's flow table with unique identifier ufid. ufid must be specified as a string of 32 hexadecimal characters.

dpctl/del-flows [dp]

Deletes all flow entries from datapath dp's flow table.

### DATAPATH FLOW CACHE COMMANDS
The following commands are useful for debugging and configuring the datapath flow cache settings.

dpctl/cache-get-size [dp]

Prints the current cache sizes to the console.

dpctl/cache-set-size dp cache size

Set the dp's specific cache to the given size. The cache name can be found by using the cache-get-size command.

### CONNECTION TRACKING TABLE COMMANDS
The following commands are useful for debugging and configuring the connection tracking table in the datapath.

The dp argument to each of these commands is optional when exactly one datapath exists, in which case that datapath is the default. When multiple datapaths exist, then a datapath name is required.

N.B.(Linux specific): the system datapaths (i.e. the Linux kernel module Open vSwitch datapaths) share a single connection tracking table (which is also used by other kernel subsystems, such as iptables, nftables and the regular host stack). Therefore, the following commands do not apply specifically to one datapath.

dpctl/ipf-set-enabled [dp] v4|v6

dpctl/ipf-set-disabled [dp] v4|v6

Enables or disables IP fragmentation handling for the userspace connection tracker. Either v4 or v6 must be specified. Both IPv4 and IPv6 fragment reassembly are enabled by default. Only supported for the userspace datapath.

dpctl/ipf-set-min-frag [dp] v4|v6 minfrag

Sets the minimum fragment size (L3 header and data) for non-final fragments to minfrag. Either v4 or v6 must be specified. For enhanced DOS security, higher minimum fragment sizes can usually be used. The default IPv4 value is 1200 and the clamped minimum is 400. The default IPv6 value is 1280, with a clamped minimum of 400, for testing flexibility. The maximum fragment size is not clamped, however, setting this value too high might result in valid fragments being dropped. Only supported for userspace datapath.

dpctl/ipf-set-max-nfrags [dp] maxfrags

Sets the maximum number of fragments tracked by the userspace datapath connection tracker to maxfrags. The default value is 1000 and the clamped maximum is 5000. Note that packet buffers can be held by the fragmentation module while fragments are incomplete, but will timeout after 15 seconds. Memory pool sizing should be set accordingly when fragmentation is enabled. Only supported for userspace datapath.

dpctl/ipf-get-status [dp] [-m | --more]

Gets the configuration settings and fragment counters associated with the fragmentation handling of the userspace datapath connection tracker. With -m or --more, also dumps the IP fragment lists. Only supported for userspace datapath.

dpctl/dump-conntrack [-m | --more] [-s | --statistics] [dp] [zone=zone]

Prints to the console all the connection entries in the tracker used by dp. If zone=zone is specified, only shows the connections in zone. With --more, some implementation specific details are included. With --statistics timeouts and timestamps are added to the output.

dpctl/dump-conntrack-exp [dp] [zone=zone]

Prints to the console all the expectation entries in the tracker used by dp. If zone=zone is specified, only shows the expectations in zone. Only supported for userspace datapath.

dpctl/flush-conntrack [dp] [zone=zone] [ct-origin-tuple [ct-reply-tuple]]

Flushes the connection entries in the tracker used by dp based on zone and connection tracking tuple ct-origin-tuple. If ct-tuple is not provided, flushes all the connection entries. If zone=zone is specified, only flushes the connections in zone.

If ct-[orig|reply]-tuple is provided, flushes the connection entry specified by ct-[orig|reply]-tuple in zone. The zone defaults to 0 if it is not provided. The userspace connection tracker requires flushing with the original pre-NATed tuple and a warning log will be otherwise generated. The tuple can be partial and will remove all connections that are matching on the specified fields. In order to specify only ct-reply-tuple, provide empty string as ct-origin-tuple.

Note: Currently there is a limitation for matching on ICMP, in order to partially match on ICMP parameters the ct-[orig|reply]-tuple has to include either source or destination IP.

An example of an IPv4 ICMP ct-[orig|reply]-tuple:

"ct_nw_src=10.1.1.1,ct_nw_dst=10.1.1.2,ct_nw_proto=1,icmp_type=8,icmp_code=0,icmp_id=10"

An example of an IPv6 TCP ct-[orig|reply]-tuple:

"ct_ipv6_src=fc00::1,ct_ipv6_dst=fc00::2,ct_nw_proto=6,ct_tp_src=1,ct_tp_dst=2"

dpctl/ct-stats-show [dp] [zone=zone] [-m | --more]

Displays the number of connections grouped by protocol used by dp. If zone=zone is specified, numbers refer to the connections in zone. With --more, groups by connection state for each protocol.

dpctl/ct-bkts [dp] [gt=threshold]

For each conntrack bucket, displays the number of connections used by dp. If gt=threshold is specified, bucket numbers are displayed when the number of connections in a bucket is greater than threshold.

dpctl/ct-set-maxconns [dp] maxconns

Sets the maximum limit of connection tracker entries to maxconns on dp. This can be used to reduce the processing load on the system due to connection tracking or simply limiting connection tracking. If the number of connections is already over the new maximum limit request then the new maximum limit will be enforced when the number of connections decreases to that limit, which normally happens due to connection expiry. Only supported for userspace datapath.

dpctl/ct-get-maxconns [dp]

Prints the maximum limit of connection tracker entries on dp. Only supported for userspace datapath.

dpctl/ct-get-nconns [dp]

Prints the current number of connection tracker entries on dp. Only supported for userspace datapath.

dpctl/ct-enable-tcp-seq-chk [dp]

dpctl/ct-disable-tcp-seq-chk [dp]

Enables or disables TCP sequence checking. When set to disabled, all sequence number verification is disabled, including for TCP resets. This is similar, but not the same as 'be_liberal' mode, as in Netfilter. Disabling sequence number verification is not an optimization in itself, but is needed for some hardware offload support which might offer some performance advantage. Sequence number checking is enabled by default to enforce better security and should only be disabled if required for hardware offload support. This command is only supported for the userspace datapath.

dpctl/ct-get-tcp-seq-chk [dp]

Prints whether TCP sequence checking is enabled or disabled on dp. Only supported for the userspace datapath.

dpctl/ct-set-sweep-interval [dp] ms

Sets the sweep interval. Only supported for the userspace datapath.

dpctl/ct-get-sweep-interval [dp]

Prints the current sweep interval in ms. Only supported for the userspace datapath.

dpctl/ct-set-limits [dp] [default=default_limit] [zone=zone,limit=limit]...

Sets the maximum allowed number of connections in a connection tracking zone. A specific zone may be set to limit, and multiple zones may be specified with a comma-separated list. If a per-zone limit for a particular zone is not specified in the datapath, it defaults to the default per-zone limit. A default zone may be specified with the default=default_limit argument. Initially, the default per-zone limit is unlimited. An unlimited number of entries may be set with 0 limit.

dpctl/ct-del-limits [dp] zone=zone[,zone]...

Deletes the connection tracking limit for zone. Multiple zones may be specified with a comma-separated list.

dpctl/ct-get-limits [dp] [zone=zone[,zone]...]

Retrieves the maximum allowed number of connections and current counts per-zone. If zone is given, only the specified zone(s) are printed. If no zones are specified, all the zone limits and counts are provided. The command always displays the default zone limit.

### DPDK COMMANDS
These commands manage DPDK components.

dpdk/lcore-list

Lists the DPDK lcores and their cpu affinity. When RTE_MAX_LCORE lcores are registered, some OVS PMD threads won't appear.

dpdk/log-list

Lists all DPDK components that emit logs and their logging levels.

dpdk/log-set [spec]

Sets DPDK components logging level. Without any spec, sets the logging level for all DPDK components to debug. Otherwise, spec is a list of words separated by spaces: a word can be either a logging level (emergency, alert, critical, error, warning, notice, info or debug) or a pattern matching DPDK components (see dpdk/log-list command on ovs-appctl(8)) separated by a colon from the logging level to apply.

dpdk/get-malloc-stats

Prints the heap information statistics about DPDK malloc.

### DPIF-NETDEV COMMANDS
These commands are used to expose internal information (mostly statistics) about the "dpif-netdev" userspace datapath. If there is only one datapath (as is often the case, unless dpctl/ commands are used), the dp argument can be omitted. By default the commands present data for all pmd threads in the datapath. By specifying the "-pmd Core" option one can filter the output for a single pmd in the datapath.

dpif-netdev/pmd-stats-show [-pmd core] [dp]

Shows performance statistics for one or all pmd threads of the datapath dp. The special thread "main" sums up the statistics of every non pmd thread. The sum of "phwol hits", "simple match hits", "emc hits", "smc hits", "megaflow hits" and "miss" is the number of packet lookups performed by the datapath. Beware that a recirculated packet experiences one additional lookup per recirculation, so there may be more lookups than forwarded packets in the datapath.

The MFEX Opt hits displays the number of packets that are processed by the optimized miniflow extract implementations.

Cycles are counted using the TSC or similar facilities (when available on the platform). The duration of one cycle depends on the processing platform.

"idle cycles" refers to cycles spent in PMD iterations not forwarding any any packets. "processing cycles" refers to cycles spent in PMD iterations forwarding at least one packet, including the cost for polling, processing and transmitting said packets.

To reset these counters use dpif-netdev/pmd-stats-clear.

dpif-netdev/pmd-stats-clear [dp]

Resets to zero the per pmd thread performance numbers shown by the dpif-netdev/pmd-stats-show and dpif-netdev/pmd-perf-show commands. It will NOT reset datapath or bridge statistics, only the values shown by the above commands.

dpif-netdev/pmd-perf-show [-nh] [-it iter_len] [-ms ms_len] [-pmd core] [dp]

Shows detailed performance metrics for one or all pmds threads of the user space datapath. The collection of detailed statistics can be controlled by a new configuration parameter "other_config:pmd-perf-metrics". By default it is disabled. The run-time overhead, when enabled, is in the order of 1%.

—

used cycles

—

forwared packets

—

number of rx batches

—

packets/rx batch

—

max. vhostuser queue fill level

—

number of upcalls

—

cycles spent in upcalls

This raw recorded data is used threefold:

1.

In histograms for each of the following metrics:

—

cycles/iteration (logarithmic)

—

packets/iteration (logarithmic)

—

cycles/packet

—

packets/batch

—

max. vhostuser qlen (logarithmic)

—

upcalls

—

cycles/upcall (logarithmic) The histograms bins are divided linear or logarithmic.

2.

A cyclic history of the above metrics for 1024 iterations

3.

A cyclic history of the cummulative/average values per millisecond wall clock for the last 1024 milliseconds:

—

number of iterations

—

avg. cycles/iteration

—

packets (Kpps)

—

avg. packets/batch

—

avg. max vhost qlen

—

upcalls

—

avg. cycles/upcall

The command options are:

-nh

Suppress the histograms

-it iter_len

Display the last iter_len iteration stats

-ms ms_len

Display the last ms_len millisecond stats

The output always contains the following global PMD statistics:

```
Time: 15:24:55.270
Measurement duration: 1.008 s
pmd thread numa_id 0 core_id 1:

  Iterations:              572817  (1.76 us/it)

  - Used TSC cycles:   2419034712  ( 99.9 % of total cycles)

  - idle iterations:       486808  ( 15.9 % of used cycles)

  - busy iterations:        86009  ( 84.1 % of used cycles)

  Rx packets:             2399607  (2381 Kpps, 848 cycles/pkt)

  Datapath passes:        3599415  (1.50 passes/pkt)

  - PHWOL hits:                 0  (  0.0 %)

  - MFEX Opt hits:        3570133  ( 99.2 %)

  - Simple Match hits:          0  (  0.0 %)

  - EMC hits:              336472  (  9.3 %)

  - SMC hits:                   0  (  0.0 %)

  - Megaflow hits:        3262943  ( 90.7 %, 1.00 subtbl lookups/hit)

  - Upcalls:                    0  (  0.0 %, 0.0 us/upcall)

  - Lost upcalls:               0  (  0.0 %)

  Tx packets:             2399607  (2381 Kpps)

  Tx batches:              171400  (14.00 pkts/batch)

```

Here "Rx packets" actually reflects the number of packets forwarded by the datapath. "Datapath passes" matches the number of packet lookups as reported by the dpif-netdev/pmd-stats-show command. To reset the counters and start a new measurement use dpif-netdev/pmd-stats-clear.

dpif-netdev/pmd-perf-log-set on|off [-b before] [-a after] [-e|-ne] [-us usec] [-q qlen]

The userspace "netdev" datapath is able to supervise the PMD performance metrics and detect iterations with suspicious statistics according to the following criteria:

—

The iteration lasts longer than usec microseconds (default 250). This can be used to capture events where a PMD is blocked or interrupted for such a period of time that there is a risk for dropped packets on any of its Rx queues.

—

The max vhost qlen exceeds a threshold qlen (default 128). This can be used to infer virtio queue overruns and dropped packets inside a VM, which are not visible in OVS otherwise.

Such suspicious iterations can be logged together with their iteration statistics in the ovs-vswitchd.log to be able to correlate them to packet drop or other events outside OVS. The above command enables (on) or disables (off) supervision and logging at run-time and can be used to adjust the above thresholds for detecting suspicious iterations. By default supervision and logging is disabled.

The command options are:

-b before

The number of iterations before the suspicious iteration to be logged (default 5).

-a after

The number of iterations after the suspicious iteration to be logged (default 5).

-e

Extend logging interval if another suspicious iteration is detected before logging occurs.

-ne

Do not extend logging interval if another suspicious iteration is detected before logging occurs (default).

-q qlen

Suspicious vhost queue fill level threshold. Increase this to 512 if the Qemu supports 1024 virtio queue length (default 128).

-us usec

Change the duration threshold for a suspicious iteration (default 250 us).

Note: Logging of suspicious iterations itself consumes a considerable amount of processing cycles of a PMD which may be visible in the iteration history. In the worst case this can lead OVS to detect another suspicious iteration caused by logging.

If more than 100 iterations around a suspicious iteration have been logged once, OVS falls back to the safe default values (-b 5 -a 5 -ne) to avoid that logging itself continuously causes logging of further suspicious iterations.

dpif-netdev/pmd-rxq-show [-pmd core] [dp]

For one or all pmd threads of the datapath dp show the list of queue-ids with port names, which this thread polls.

dpif-netdev/pmd-rxq-rebalance [dp]

Reassigns rxqs to pmds in the datapath dp based on their current usage.

dpif-netdev/bond-show [dp]

When "other_config:lb-output-action" is set to "true", the userspace datapath handles the load balancing of bonds directly instead of depending on flow recirculation (only in balance-tcp mode). When this is the case, the above command prints the load-balancing information of the bonds configured in datapath dp showing the interface associated with each bucket (hash).

dpif-netdev/subtable-lookup-prio-get

Lists the DPCLS implementations or lookup functions that are available as well as their priorities.

dpif-netdev/subtable-lookup-prio-set lookup_function prio

Sets the priority of a lookup function by name, lookup_function, and priority, prio, which should be a positive integer value. The highest priority lookup function is used for classification. The number of affected dpcls ports and subtables is returned.

dpif-netdev/dpif-impl-get

Lists the DPIF implementations that are available.

dpif-netdev/dpif-impl-set dpif_impl

Sets the DPIF to be used to dpif_impl. By default "dpif_scalar" is used.

dpif-netdev/miniflow-parser-get

Lists the miniflow extract implementations that are available.

dpif-netdev/miniflow-parser-set [-pmd core] miniflow_impl [study_cnt]

Sets the miniflow extract to miniflow_impl for a specified PMD or all PMDs in the case where no value is specified. By default "scalar" is used. study_cnt defaults to 128 and indicates the number of packets that the "study" miniflow implementation must parse before choosing an optimal implementation.

### DPIF-NETLINK COMMANDS
These commands are used to expose internal information of the "dpif-netlink" kernel space datapath.

dpif-netlink/dispatch-mode

Displays the "dispatch-mode" for all datapaths.

### NETDEV-DPDK COMMANDS
These commands manage DPDK related ports (type=dpdk*).

netdev-dpdk/set-admin-state [interface] up | down

Change the admin state for DPDK interface to up or down. If interface is not specified, then it applies to all DPDK ports.

netdev-dpdk/detach pci-address

Detaches device with corresponding pci-address from DPDK. This command can be used to detach device if it wasn't detached automatically after port deletion. Refer to the documentation for details and instructions.

netdev-dpdk/get-mempool-info [interface]

Prints the debug information about memory pool used by DPDK interface. If called without arguments, information of all the available mempools will be printed. For additional mempool statistics enable CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_MEMPOOL_DEBUG while building DPDK.

### ODP-EXECUTE COMMANDS
These commands manage the "odp-execute" component.

odp-execute/action-impl-show

Lists the actions implementations that are available and highlights the currently enabled one.

odp-execute/action-impl-set action_impl

Sets the action implementation to any available implementation. By default "scalar" is used.

### DATAPATH DEBUGGING COMMANDS
These commands query and modify datapaths. They are are similar to ovs-dpctl(8) commands. dpif/show has the additional functionality, beyond dpctl/show of printing OpenFlow port numbers. The other commands are redundant and will be removed in a future release.

dpif/dump-dps

Prints the name of each configured datapath on a separate line.

dpif/show

Prints a summary of configured datapaths, including statistics and a list of connected ports. The port information includes the OpenFlow port number, datapath port number, and the type. (The local port is identified as OpenFlow port 65534.)

dpif/dump-flows [-m] dp

Prints to the console all flow entries in datapath dp's flow table. Without -m, output omits match fields that a flow wildcards entirely; with -m output includes all wildcarded fields.

This command is primarily useful for debugging Open vSwitch. The flow table entries that it displays are not OpenFlow flow entries. Instead, they are different and considerably simpler flows maintained by the datapath module. If you wish to see the OpenFlow flow entries, use ovs-ofctl dump-flows.

dpif/del-flows dp

Deletes all flow entries from datapath dp's flow table and underlying datapath implementation (e.g., kernel datapath module).

This command is primarily useful for debugging Open vSwitch. As discussed in dpif/dump-flows, these entries are not OpenFlow flow entries.

### OFPROTO COMMANDS
These commands manage the core OpenFlow switch implementation (called ofproto).

ofproto/list

Lists the names of the running ofproto instances. These are the names that may be used on ofproto/trace.

ofproto/trace [options] [dpname] odp_flow [packet]

ofproto/trace [options] bridge br_flow [packet]]

ofproto/trace-packet-out [options] [dpname] odp_flow [packet] actions

ofproto/trace-packet-out [options] bridge br_flow [packet] actions

Traces the path of an imaginary packet through switch and reports the path that it took. The initial treatment of the packet varies based on the command:

- ofproto/trace looks the packet up in the OpenFlow flow table, as if the packet had arrived on an OpenFlow port.

- ofproto/trace-packet-out applies the specified OpenFlow actions, as if the packet, flow, and actions had been specified in an OpenFlow ``packet-out'' request.

The packet's headers (e.g. source and destination) and metadata (e.g. input port), together called its ``flow,'' are usually all that matter for the purpose of tracing a packet. You can specify the flow in the following ways:

dpname odp_flow

odp_flow is a flow in the form printed by ovs-dpctl(8)'s dump-flows command. If all of your bridges have the same type, which is the common case, then you can omit dpname, but if you have bridges of different types (say, both ovs-netdev and ovs-system), then you need to specify a dpname to disambiguate.

bridge br_flow

br_flow is a flow in the form similar to that accepted by ovs-ofctl(8)'s add-flow command. (This is not an OpenFlow flow: besides other differences, it never contains wildcards.) bridge names of the bridge through which br_flow should be traced.

These commands support the following options: --generate

Generate a packet from the flow (see below for more information).

--l7 payload

--l7-len length

Accepted only with --generate (see below for more information).

--consistent

Accepted by ofproto-trace-packet-out only. With this option, the command rejects actions that are inconsistent with the specified packet. (An example of an inconsistency is attempting to strip the VLAN tag from a packet that does not have a VLAN tag.) Open vSwitch ignores most forms of inconsistency in OpenFlow 1.0 and rejects inconsistencies in later versions of OpenFlow. The option is necessary because the command does not ordinarily imply a particular OpenFlow version. One exception is that, when actions includes an action that only OpenFlow 1.1 and later supports (such as push_vlan), --consistent is automatically enabled.

--ct-next flags

When the traced flow triggers conntrack actions, ofproto/trace will automatically trace the forked packet processing pipeline with user specified ct_state. This option sets the ct_state flags that the conntrack module will report. The flags must be a comma- or space-separated list of the following connection tracking flags:

- trk: Include to indicate connection tracking has taken place.

- new: Include to indicate a new flow.

- est: Include to indicate an established flow.

- rel: Include to indicate a related flow.

- rpl: Include to indicate a reply flow.

- inv: Include to indicate a connection entry in a bad state.

- dnat: Include to indicate a packet whose destination IP address has been changed.

- snat: Include to indicate a packet whose source IP address has been changed.

When --ct-next is unspecified, or when there are fewer --ct-next options than ct actions, the flags default to trk,new.

Most commonly, one specifies only a flow, using one of the forms above, but sometimes one might need to specify an actual packet instead of just a flow:

Side effects.

Some actions have side effects. For example, the normal action can update the MAC learning table, and the learn action can change OpenFlow tables. The trace commands only perform side effects when a packet is specified. If you want side effects to take place, then you must supply a packet.

(Output actions are obviously side effects too, but the trace commands never execute them, even when one specifies a packet.)

Incomplete information.

Most of the time, Open vSwitch can figure out everything about the path of a packet using just the flow, but in some special circumstances it needs to look at parts of the packet that are not included in the flow. When this is the case, and you do not supply a packet, then a trace command will tell you it needs a packet.

If you wish to include a packet as part of a trace operation, there are two ways to do it:

--generate

This option, added to one of the ways to specify a flow already described, causes Open vSwitch to internally generate a packet with the flow described and then to use that packet. If your goal is to execute side effects, then --generate is the easiest way to do it, but --generate is not a good way to fill in incomplete information, because it generates packets based on only the flow information, which means that the packets really do not have any more information than the flow.

By default, for protocols that allow arbitrary L7 payloads, the generated packet has 64 bytes of payload. Use --l7-len to change the payload length, or --l7 to specify the exact contents of the payload.

packet

This form supplies an explicit packet as a sequence of hex digits. An Ethernet frame is at least 14 bytes long, so there must be at least 28 hex digits. Obviously, it is inconvenient to type in the hex digits by hand, so the ovs-pcap(1) and ovs-tcpundump(1) utilities provide easier ways.

With this form, packet headers are extracted directly from packet, so the odp_flow or br_flow should specify only metadata. The metadata can be:

skb_priority

Packet QoS priority.

pkt_mark

Mark of the packet.

ct_state

Connection state of the packet.

ct_zone

Connection tracking zone for packet.

ct_mark

Connection mark of the packet.

ct_label

Connection label of the packet.

tun_id

The tunnel ID on which the packet arrived.

in_port

The port on which the packet arrived.

The in_port value is kernel datapath port number for the first format and OpenFlow port number for the second format. The numbering of these two types of port usually differs and there is no relationship.

Usage examples:

Trace an unicast ICMP echo request on ingress port 1 to destination MAC 00:00:5E:00:53:01

```
ofproto/trace br in_port=1,icmp,icmp_type=8,\
dl_dst=00:00:5E:00:53:01
```

```

```

Trace an unicast ICMP echo reply on ingress port 1 to destination MAC 00:00:5E:00:53:01

```
ofproto/trace br in_port=1,icmp,icmp_type=0,\
dl_dst=00:00:5E:00:53:01
```

Trace an ARP request on ingress port 1

```
ofproto/trace br in_port=1,arp,arp_op=1
```

Trace an ARP reply on ingress port 1

```
ofproto/trace br in_port=1,arp,arp_op=2
```

### VLOG COMMANDS
These commands manage ovs-vswitchd'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 ovs-vswitchd 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/close

Causes ovs-vswitchd to close its log file, if it is open. (Use vlog/reopen to reopen it later.)

vlog/reopen

Causes ovs-vswitchd to close its log file, if it is open, and then reopen it. (This is useful after rotating log files, to cause a new log file to be used.)

This has no effect unless ovs-vswitchd was invoked with the --log-file option.

vlog/disable-rate-limit [module]...

vlog/enable-rate-limit [module]...

By default, ovs-vswitchd 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 ovs-vswitchd's memory usage. ovs-vswitchd also logs this information soon after startup and periodically as its memory consumption grows.

### COVERAGE COMMANDS
These commands manage ovs-vswitchd's ``coverage counters,'' which count the number of times particular events occur during a daemon's runtime. In addition to these commands, ovs-vswitchd 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.

coverage/read-counter counter

Displays the total count for the given coverage counter.

### OPENVSWITCH TUNNELING COMMANDS
These commands query and modify OVS tunnel components.

ovs/route/add ip/plen output_bridge [gw] [pkt_mark=mark] [src=src_ip]

Adds ip/plen route to vswitchd routing table. output_bridge needs to be OVS bridge name. This command is useful if OVS cached routes does not look right.

ovs/route/show

Print all routes in OVS routing table, This includes routes cached from system routing table and user configured routes.

ovs/route/del ip/plen [pkt_mark=mark]

Delete ip/plen route from OVS routing table.

tnl/neigh/show

tnl/arp/show

OVS builds ARP cache by snooping are messages. This command shows ARP cache table.

tnl/neigh/set bridge ip mac

tnl/arp/set bridge ip mac

Adds or modifies an ARP cache entry in bridge, mapping ip to mac.

tnl/neigh/flush

tnl/arp/flush

Flush ARP table.

tnl/neigh/aging [seconds]

tnl/arp/aging [seconds]

Changes the aging time. The accepted values of seconds are between 1 and 3600. The new entries will get the value as specified in seconds. For the existing entries, the aging time is updated only if the current expiration is greater than seconds.

If used without arguments, it prints the current aging value.

tnl/egress_port_range [num1] [num2]

Set range for UDP source port used for UDP based Tunnels. For example VxLAN. If case of zero arguments this command prints current range in use.

## OPENFLOW IMPLEMENTATION
This section documents aspects of OpenFlow for which the OpenFlow specification requires documentation.

### Packet buffering.
The OpenFlow specification, version 1.2, says:

Switches that implement buffering are expected to expose, through documentation, both the amount of available buffering, and the length of time before buffers may be reused.

Open vSwitch does not maintains any packet buffers.

### Bundle lifetime
The OpenFlow specification, version 1.4, says:

If the switch does not receive any OFPT_BUNDLE_CONTROL or OFPT_BUNDLE_ADD_MESSAGE message for an opened bundle_id for a switch defined time greater than 1s, it may send an ofp_error_msg with OFPET_BUNDLE_FAILED type and OFPBFC_TIMEOUT code. If the switch does not receive any new message in a bundle apart from echo request and replies for a switch defined time greater than 1s, it may send an ofp_error_msg with OFPET_BUNDLE_FAILED type and OFPBFC_TIMEOUT code.

Open vSwitch implements default idle bundle lifetime of 10 seconds. (This is configurable via other-config:bundle-idle-timeout in the Open_vSwitch table. See ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5) for details.)

## LIMITS
We believe these limits to be accurate as of this writing. These limits assume the use of the Linux kernel datapath.

- ovs-vswitchd started through ovs-ctl(8) provides a limit of 65535 file descriptors. The limits on the number of bridges and ports is decided by the availability of file descriptors. With the Linux kernel datapath, creation of a single bridge consumes three file descriptors and each port consumes one additional file descriptor. Other platforms may have different limitations.

- 8,192 MAC learning entries per bridge, by default. (This is configurable via other-config:mac-table-size in the Bridge table. See ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5) for details.)

- Kernel flows are limited only by memory available to the kernel. Performance will degrade beyond 1,048,576 kernel flows per bridge with a 32-bit kernel, beyond 262,144 with a 64-bit kernel. (ovs-vswitchd should never install anywhere near that many flows.)

- OpenFlow flows are limited only by available memory. Performance is linear in the number of unique wildcard patterns. That is, an OpenFlow table that contains many flows that all match on the same fields in the same way has a constant-time lookup, but a table that contains many flows that match on different fields requires lookup time linear in the number of flows.

- 255 ports per bridge participating in 802.1D Spanning Tree Protocol.

- 32 mirrors per bridge.

- 15 bytes for the name of a port, for ports implemented in the Linux kernel. Ports implemented in userspace, such as patch ports, do not have an arbitrary length limitation. OpenFlow also limit port names to 15 bytes.

## SEE ALSO
ovs-appctl(8), ovsdb-server(1).

branch: sisyphus


ovs-bugtool

package: openvswitch-debugtools

title: ovs-bugtool(8)

summary: Open vSwitch bug reporting utility

text:
# ovs-bugtool(8)

## NAME
ovs-bugtool - Open vSwitch bug reporting utility

## SYNOPSIS
ovs-bugtool

## DESCRIPTION
Generates a debug bundle with useful information about Open vSwitch on this system and places it in /var/log/ovs-bugtool.

## COLLECTION OPTIONS
These options influence what categories of data ovs-bugtool collects.

--entries=list

Collect the capabilities specified in the comma-separated list.

--all

Collect all available capabilities.

--ovs

In addition to Open vSwitch configuration and status, ovs-bugtool can collect a variety of relevant system information. This option limits collection to Open vSwitch-specific categories.

--log-days=days

Include the logs with last modification time in the previous days days in the debug bundle. The number of log files included has a big impact on the eventual bundle size. The default value is 20 days.

-y

--yestoall

Answer yes to all prompts.

--capabilities

Writes the categories that ovs-bugtool can collect on stdout in XML, then exits.

## OUTPUT OPTIONS
These options influence the format and destination of ovs-bugtool output.

--output=filetype

Generates a debug bundle with the specified file type. Options include tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, and zip.

--outfile=file

Write output to file. Mutually exclusive with --outfd.

--outfd=fd

Write output to file descriptor fd. This option must be used with --output=tar.

--unlimited

Do not exclude files which are too large. Also skip checking free disk space. By default up to 90 percent of the free disk space can be used.

--debug

Print verbose debugging output.

## OTHER OPTIONS
-s

--silent

Suppress most output to stdout.

--help

Print a summary of ovs-bugtool usage to stdout, then exit.

## EXAMPLES
Here's a collection of some commonly useful options:

ovs-bugtool -y -s --output=tar.gz --outfile=/var/log/bugtool-report.tgz

## BUGS
ovs-bugtool makes many assumptions about file locations and the availability of system utilities. It has been tested on Debian and Red Hat and derived distributions. On other distributions it is likely to be less useful.


ovs-dpctl-top

title: ovs-dpctl-top(8)

summary: Top like behavior for ovs\-dpctl dump\-flows

text:
# ovs-dpctl-top(8)

## NAME
ovs-dpctl-top - Top like behavior for ovs-dpctl dump-flows

## SYNOPSIS
ovs-dpctl-top [-h] [-v] [-f FLOWFILES] [-V] [-s] [--host HOST] [-a | --accumulate] [--accumulate-decay ACCUMULATEDECAY] [-d DELAY]

## DESCRIPTION
This program summarizes ovs-dpctl flow content by aggregating the number of packets, total bytes and occurrence of the following fields:

- Datapath in_port

- Ethernet type

- Source and destination MAC addresses

- IP protocol

- Source and destination IPv4 addresses

- Source and destination IPv6 addresses

- UDP and TCP destination port

- Tunnel source and destination addresses

### Output shows four values:

- FIELDS: the flow fields for example in_port(1).

- COUNT: the number of lines in the dump-flow output contain the flow field.

- PACKETS: the total number of packets containing the flow field.

- BYTES: the total number of bytes containing the flow field. If units are not present then values are in bytes.

- AVERAGE: the average packets size (BYTES/PACKET).

### Top Behavior
While in top mode, the default behavior, the following single character commands are supported:

a - toggles top in accumulate and live mode. Accumulate mode is described below.

s - toggles which column is used to sort content in decreasing order. A DESC title is placed over the column.

_ - a space indicating to collect dump-flow content again

h - halt output. Any character will restart sampling

f - cycle through flow fields

q - q for quit.

### Accumulate Mode
There are two supported modes: live and accumulate. The default is live. The parameter --accumulate or the 'a' character in top mode enables the latter. In live mode, recent dump-flow content is presented. Where as accumulate mode keeps track of the prior historical information until the flow is reset not when the flow is purged. Reset flows are determined when the packet count for a flow has decreased from its previous sample. There is one caveat, eventually the system will run out of memory if, after the accumulate-decay period any flows that have not been refreshed are purged. The goal here is to free memory of flows that are not active. Statistics are not decremented. Their purpose is to reflect the overall history of the flow fields.

### Debugging Errors
Parsing errors are counted and displayed in the status line at the beginning of the output. Use the --verbose option with --script to see what output was not parsed, like this:

$ ovs-dpctl dump-flows | ovs-dpctl-top --script --verbose

Error messages will identify content that failed to parse.

### Access Remote Hosts
The --host must follow the format user@hostname. This script simply calls 'ssh user@Hostname' without checking for login credentials therefore public keys should be installed on the system identified by hostname, such as:

$ ssh-copy-id user@hostname

Consult ssh-copy-id man pages for more details.

### Expected usage
$ ovs-dpctl-top

or to run as a script:

$ ovs-dpctl dump-flows > dump-flows.log

$ ovs-dpctl-top --script --flow-file dump-flows.log

### OPTIONS
-h, --help

show this help message and exit.

-v, --version

show program's version number and exit.

-f FLOWFILES, --flow-file FLOWFILES

file containing flows from ovs-dpctl dump-flow.

-V, --verbose

enable debug level verbosity.

-s, --script

Run from a script (no user interface).

--host HOST

Specify a user@host for retrieving flows see Accessing Remote Hosts for more information.

-a, --accumulate

Accumulate dump-flow content.

--accumulate-decay ACCUMULATEDECAY

Decay old accumulated flows. The default is 5 minutes. A value of 0 disables decay.

-d DELAY, --delay DELAY

Delay in milliseconds to collect dump-flow content (sample rate).


title: ovs-l3ping(8)

text:
# ovs-l3ping(8)

## NAME
ovs-l3ping - check network deployment for L3 tunneling problems

## SYNOPSIS
ovs-l3ping -s <TunnelRemoteIP>,<InnerIP>[/<mask>] -t <tunnelmode>

ovs-l3ping -s <TunnelRemoteIP>,<InnerIP>[/<mask>][:<ControlPort>] -t <tunnelmode>

ovs-l3ping -c <TunnelRemoteIP>,<InnerIP>[/<mask>],<RemoteInnerIP> -t <tunnelmode>

ovs-l3ping -c <TunnelRemoteIP>,<InnerIP>[/<mask>][:<ControlPort>[:<DataPort>]],<RemoteInnerIP>[:<ControlPort>[:<DataPort>]] [-b <targetbandwidth>] [-i <testinterval>] -t <tunnelmode>

ovs-l3ping -h | --help

ovs-l3ping -V | --version

## DESCRIPTION
The ovs-l3ping program may be used to check for problems that could be caused by invalid routing policy, misconfigured firewall in the tunnel path or a bad NIC driver. On one of the nodes, run ovs-l3ping in server mode and on the other node run it in client mode. The client and server will establish L3 tunnel, over which client will give further testing instructions. The ovs-l3ping client will perform UDP and TCP tests. This tool is different from ovs-test that it encapsulates XML/RPC control connection over the tunnel, so there is no need to open special holes in firewall.

UDP tests can report packet loss and achieved bandwidth for various datagram sizes. By default target bandwidth for UDP tests is 1Mbit/s.

TCP tests report only achieved bandwidth, because kernel TCP stack takes care of flow control and packet loss.

### Client Mode
An ovs-l3ping client will create a L3 tunnel and connect over it to the ovs-l3ping server to schedule the tests. <TunnelRemoteIP> is the peer’s IP address, where tunnel will be terminated. <InnerIP> is the address that will be temporarily assigned during testing. All test traffic originating from this IP address to the <RemoteInnerIP> will be tunneled. It is possible to override default <ControlPort> and <DataPort>, if there is any other application that already listens on those two ports.

### Server Mode
To conduct tests, ovs-l3ping server must be running. It is required that both client and server <InnerIP> addresses are in the same subnet. It is possible to specify <InnerIP> with netmask in CIDR format.

## OPTIONS
One of -s or -c is required. The -t option is also required.

- -s <TunnelRemoteIP>,<InnerIP>[/<mask>][:<ControlPort>] or --server <TunnelRemoteIP>,<InnerIP>[/<mask>][:<ControlPort>] Run in server mode and create L3 tunnel with the client that will be accepting tunnel at <TunnelRemoteIP> address. The socket on <InnerIP>[:<ControlPort>] will be used to receive further instructions from the client.

- -c <TunnelRemoteIP>,<InnerIP>[/<mask>][:<ControlPort>[:<DataPort>]],<RemoteInnerIP>[:<ControlPort>[:<DataPort>]] or --client <TunnelRemoteIP>,<InnerIP>[/<mask>][:<ControlPort>[:<DataPort>]],<RemoteInnerIP>[:<ControlPort>[:<DataPort>]] Run in client mode and create L3 tunnel with the server on <TunnelRemoteIP>. The client will use <InnerIP> to generate test traffic with the server’s <RemoteInnerIP>.

- -b <targetbandwidth> or --bandwidth <targetbandwidth> Target bandwidth for UDP tests. The <targetbandwidth> must be given in bits per second. Use postfix M or K to alter the target bandwidth magnitude.

- -i <testinterval> or --interval <testinterval> How long each test should run. By default 5 seconds.

- -t <tunnelmode> or --tunnel-mode <tunnelmode> Specify the tunnel type. This option must match on server and client.

- -h or --help Prints a brief help message to the console.

- -V or --version Prints version information to the console.

## EXAMPLES
On host 192.168.122.220 start ovs-l3ping in server mode. This command will create a temporary GRE tunnel with the host 192.168.122.236 and assign 10.1.1.1/28 as the inner IP address, where client will have to connect:

```
ovs-l3ping -s 192.168.122.236,10.1.1.1/28 -t gre
```

On host 192.168.122.236 start ovs-l3ping in client mode. This command will use 10.1.1.2/28 as the local inner IP address and will connect over the L3 tunnel to the server’s inner IP address at 10.1.1.1:

```
ovs-l3ping -c 192.168.122.220,10.1.1.2/28,10.1.1.1 -t gre
```

## SEE ALSO
ovs-vswitchd(8), ovs-ofctl(8), ovs-vsctl(8), ovs-vlan-test(8), ovs-test(8), ethtool(8), uname(1).

## Author
The Open vSwitch Development Community

## Copyright
2016-2021, The Open vSwitch Development Community


ovs-tcpdump

title: ovs-tcpdump(8)

text:
# ovs-tcpdump(8)

## NAME
ovs-tcpdump - Dump traffic from an Open vSwitch port using tcpdump

## SYNOPSIS
ovs-tcpdump -i <port> <tcpdump options>...

## DESCRIPTION
ovs-tcpdump creates switch mirror ports in the ovs-vswitchd daemon and executes tcpdump to listen against those ports. When the tcpdump instance exits, it then cleans up the mirror port it created.

ovs-tcpdump will not allow multiple mirrors for the same port. It has some logic to parse the current configuration and prevent duplicate mirrors.

The -i option may not appear multiple times.

It is important to note that under Linux-based kernels, tap devices do not receive packets unless the specific tuntap device has been opened by an application. This requires CAP_NET_ADMIN privileges, so the ovs-tcpdump command must be run as a user with such permissions (this is usually a super-user).

## OPTIONS

- -h or --help Prints a brief help message to the console.

- -V or --version Prints version information to the console.

- --db-sock <socket> The Open vSwitch database socket connection string. The default is unix:<rundir>/db.sock.

- --dump-cmd <command> The command to run instead of tcpdump.

- -i or --interface The interface for which a mirror port should be created, and packets should be dumped.

- --mirror-to The name of the interface which should be the destination of the mirrored packets. The default is mi<port>.

- --span If specified, mirror all ports (optional).

## SEE ALSO
ovs-appctl(8), ovs-vswitchd(8), ovs-pcap(1), ovs-tcpundump(1), tcpdump(8), wireshark(8).

## Author
The Open vSwitch Development Community

## Copyright
2016-2021, The Open vSwitch Development Community


ovs-test

title: ovs-test(8)

text:
# ovs-test(8)

## NAME
ovs-test - Check Linux drivers for performance, vlan and L3 tunneling problems

## SYNOPSIS
ovs-test -s port

ovs-test -c server1 server2 [-b targetbandwidth] [-i testinterval] [-d]

[-l vlantag] [-t tunnelmodes]

## DESCRIPTION
The ovs-test program may be used to check for problems sending 802.1Q or GRE traffic that Open vSwitch may uncover. These problems, for example, can occur when Open vSwitch is used to send 802.1Q traffic through physical interfaces running certain drivers of certain Linux kernel versions. To run a test, configure IP addresses on server1 and server2 for interfaces you intended to test. These interfaces could also be already configured OVS bridges that have a physical interface attached to them. Then, on one of the nodes, run ovs-test in server mode and on the other node run it in client mode. The client will connect to ovs-test server and schedule tests between both of them. The ovs-test client will perform UDP and TCP tests.

UDP tests can report packet loss and achieved bandwidth for various datagram sizes. By default target bandwidth for UDP tests is 1Mbit/s.

TCP tests report only achieved bandwidth, because kernel TCP stack takes care of flow control and packet loss. TCP tests are essential to detect potential TSO related issues.

To determine whether Open vSwitch is encountering any problems, the user must compare packet loss and achieved bandwidth in a setup where traffic is being directly sent and in one where it is not. If in the 802.1Q or L3 tunneled tests both ovs-test processes are unable to communicate or the achieved bandwidth is much lower compared to direct setup, then, most likely, Open vSwitch has encountered a pre-existing kernel or driver bug.

Some examples of the types of problems that may be encountered are:

- When NICs use VLAN stripping on receive they must pass a pointer to a vlan_group when reporting the stripped tag to the networking core. If no vlan_group is in use then some drivers just drop the extracted tag. Drivers are supposed to only enable stripping if a vlan_group is registered but not all of them do that.

- On receive, some drivers handle priority tagged packets specially and don’t pass the tag onto the network stack at all, so Open vSwitch never has a chance to see it.

- Some drivers size their receive buffers based on whether a vlan_group is enabled, meaning that a maximum size packet with a VLAN tag will not fit if no vlan_group is configured.

- On transmit, some drivers expect that VLAN acceleration will be used if it is available, which can only be done if a vlan_group is configured. In these cases, the driver may fail to parse the packet and correctly setup checksum offloading or TSO.

Client Mode

An ovs-test client will connect to two ovs-test servers and will ask them to exchange test traffic. It is also possible to spawn an ovs-test server automatically from the client.

Server Mode

To conduct tests, two ovs-test servers must be running on two different hosts where the client can connect. The actual test traffic is exchanged only between both ovs-test servers. It is recommended that both servers have their IP addresses in the same subnet, otherwise one would have to make sure that routing is set up correctly.

## OPTIONS
-s <port>, --server <port>

Run in server mode and wait for the client to establish XML RPC Control Connection on this TCP port. It is recommended to have ethtool(8) installed on the server so that it could retrieve information about the NIC driver.

-c <server1> <server2>, --client <server1> <server2>

Run in client mode and schedule tests between server1 and server2, where each server must be given in the following format:

```
OuterIP[:OuterPort],InnerIP[/Mask][:InnerPort].
```

The OuterIP must be already assigned to the physical interface which is going to be tested. This is the IP address where client will try to establish XML RPC connection. If OuterIP is 127.0.0.1 then client will automatically spawn a local instance of ovs-test server. OuterPort is TCP port where server is listening for incoming XML/RPC control connections to schedule tests (by default it is 15531). The ovs-test will automatically assign InnerIP[/Mask] to the interfaces that will be created on the fly for testing purposes. It is important that InnerIP[/Mask] does not interfere with already existing IP addresses on both ovs-test servers and client. InnerPort is port which will be used by server to listen for test traffic that will be encapsulated (by default it is 15532).

-b <targetbandwidth>, --bandwidth <targetbandwidth>

Target bandwidth for UDP tests. The targetbandwidth must be given in bits per second. It is possible to use postfix M or K to alter the target bandwidth magnitude.

-i <testinterval>, --interval <testinterval>

How long each test should run. By default 5 seconds.

-h, --help

Prints a brief help message to the console.

-V, --version

Prints version information to the console.

The following test modes are supported by ovs-test. It is possible to combine multiple of them in a single ovs-test invocation.

-d, --direct

Perform direct tests between both OuterIP addresses. These tests could be used as a reference to compare 802.1Q or L3 tunneling test results.

-l <vlantag>, --vlan-tag <vlantag>

Perform 802.1Q tests between both servers. These tests will create a temporary OVS bridge, if necessary, and attach a VLAN tagged port to it for testing purposes.

-t <tunnelmodes>, --tunnel-modes <tunnelmodes>

Perform L3 tunneling tests. The given argument is a comma sepa‐ rated string that specifies all the L3 tunnel modes that should be tested (e.g. gre). The L3 tunnels are terminated on interface that has the OuterIP address assigned.

## EXAMPLES
On host 1.2.3.4 start ovs-test in server mode:

```
ovs-test -s 15531
```

On host 1.2.3.5 start ovs-test in client mode and do direct, VLAN and GRE tests between both nodes:

```
ovs-test -c 127.0.0.1,1.1.1.1/30 1.2.3.4,1.1.1.2/30 -d -l 123 -t
gre
```

## SEE ALSO
ovs-vswitchd(8), ovs-ofctl(8), ovs-vsctl(8), ovs-vlan-test, ethtool(8), uname(1)

## Author
The Open vSwitch Development Community

## Copyright
2016-2021, The Open vSwitch Development Community


ovs-vlan-test

title: ovs-vlan-test(8)

text:
# ovs-vlan-test(8)

## NAME
ovs-vlan-test - Check Linux drivers for problems with vlan traffic

## SYNOPSIS
ovs-vlan-test [-s | –server] control_ip vlan_ip

## DESCRIPTION
The ovs-vlan-test utility has some limitations, for example, it does not use TCP in its tests. Also it does not take into account MTU to detect potential edge cases. To overcome those limitations a new tool was developed - ovs-test. ovs-test is currently supported only on Debian so, if possible, try to use that on instead of ovs-vlan-test.

The ovs-vlan-test program may be used to check for problems sending 802.1Q traffic which may occur when running Open vSwitch. These problems can occur when Open vSwitch is used to send 802.1Q traffic through physical interfaces running certain drivers of certain Linux kernel versions. To run a test, configure Open vSwitch to tag traffic originating from vlan_ip and forward it out the target interface. Then run the ovs-vlan-test in client mode connecting to an ovs-vlan-test server. ovs-vlan-test will display “OK” if it did not detect problems.

Some examples of the types of problems that may be encountered are:

- When NICs use VLAN stripping on receive they must pass a pointer to a vlan_group when reporting the stripped tag to the networking core. If no vlan_group is in use then some drivers just drop the extracted tag. Drivers are supposed to only enable stripping if a vlan_group is registered but not all of them do that.

- On receive, some drivers handle priority tagged packets specially and don’t pass the tag onto the network stack at all, so Open vSwitch never has a chance to see it.

- Some drivers size their receive buffers based on whether a vlan_group is enabled, meaning that a maximum size packet with a VLAN tag will not fit if no vlan_group is configured.

- On transmit, some drivers expect that VLAN acceleration will be used if it is available, which can only be done if a vlan_group is configured. In these cases, the driver may fail to parse the packet and correctly setup checksum offloading or TSO.

Client Mode

An ovs-vlan-test client may be run on a host to check for VLAN connectivity problems. The client must be able to establish HTTP connections with an ovs-vlan-test server located at the specified control_ip address. UDP traffic sourced at vlan_ip should be tagged and directed out the interface whose connectivity is being tested.

Server Mode

To conduct tests, an ovs-vlan-test server must be running on a host known not to have VLAN connectivity problems. The server must have a control_ip on a non-VLAN network which clients can establish connectivity with. It must also have a vlan_ip address on a VLAN network which clients will use to test their VLAN connectivity. Multiple clients may test against a single ovs-vlan-test server concurrently.

## OPTIONS
-s, --server

Run in server mode.

-h, --help

Prints a brief help message to the console.

-V, --version

Prints version information to the console.

## EXAMPLES
Display the Linux kernel version and driver of eth1:

```
uname -r
ethtool -i eth1
```

Set up a bridge which forwards traffic originating from 1.2.3.4 out eth1 with VLAN tag 10:

```
ovs-vsctl -- add-br vlan-br \

  -- add-port vlan-br eth1 \

  -- add-port vlan-br vlan-br-tag tag=10 \

  -- set Interface vlan-br-tag type=internal
ip addr add 1.2.3.4/8 dev vlan-br-tag
ip link set vlan-br-tag up
```

Run an ovs-vlan-test server listening for client control traffic on 172.16.0.142 port 8080 and VLAN traffic on the default port of 1.2.3.3:

```
ovs-vlan-test -s 172.16.0.142:8080 1.2.3.3
```

Run an ovs-vlan-test client with a control server located at 172.16.0.142 port 8080 and a local VLAN IP of 1.2.3.4:

```
ovs-vlan-test 172.16.0.142:8080 1.2.3.4
```

## SEE ALSO
ovs-vswitchd(8), ovs-ofctl(8), ovs-vsctl(8), ovs-test, ethtool(8), uname(1)

## Author
The Open vSwitch Development Community

## Copyright
2016-2021, The Open vSwitch Development Community