ovn-controller-vtep(8) OVN Manual ovn-controller-vtep(8)
NAME
ovn-controller-vtep - Open Virtual Network local controller for VTEP-
enabled physical switches.
SYNOPSIS
ovn-controller-vtep [options]
DESCRIPTION
ovn-controller-vtep integrates hardware VTEP physical switches into
OVN. It connects to the OVN Southbound database (see ovn-sb(5)) and to
a hardware_vtep database (see vtep(5)) over the OVSDB protocol.
In the OVN Southbound database, ovn-controller-vtep registers each
hardware_vtep Physical_Switch as a Chassis. It creates a VXLAN Encap
using the physical switch’s first tunnel_ips value and records the
hardware_vtep logical switches attached to the chassis. It updates the
chassis association of matching vtep Port_Binding rows when there is no
conflicting binding. If a matching row is already associated with that
chassis and has an up value, it sets that value to true. A binding
matches when its options:vtep-physical-switch and options:vtep-logi‐‐
cal-switch values identify the physical switch and one of its bound
hardware_vtep logical switches.
In the hardware_vtep database, ovn-controller-vtep sets each bound tun‐‐
nel_key from the corresponding OVN logical datapath and sets replica‐‐
tion_mode to source_node. For each attached logical switch, it main‐
tains Ucast_Macs_Remote entries for MAC addresses behind other OVN
chassis and for MAC addresses learned by other VTEPs and recorded in
the OVN Southbound FDB table. It also maintains an unknown-dst
Mcast_Macs_Remote entry with the locators used for source-node replica‐
tion. Conversely, MAC addresses learned locally by the hardware VTEP in
Ucast_Macs_Local are mirrored into the OVN Southbound FDB table; stale
mirrored entries are removed.
OPTIONS
-d database
--ovnsb-db=database
Connects to database as the OVN Southbound database. If the
OVN_SB_DB environment variable is set, its value is used as the
default. Otherwise, the default is unix:/ovnsb_db.sock.
-D database
--vtep-db=database
Connects to database as the hardware_vtep database. The default is
unix:ovs-rundir/db.sock, where ovs-rundir is the local Open
vSwitch run directory. The OVS_RUNDIR environment variable over‐
rides that directory.
database in the above options must be an OVSDB active connection
method, as described in ovsdb(7).
Daemon Options
--pidfile[=pidfile]
Causes a file (by default, program.pid) to be created indicating
the PID of the running process. If the pidfile argument is not
specified, or if it does not begin with /, then it is created in
.
If --pidfile is not specified, no pidfile is created.
--overwrite-pidfile
By default, when --pidfile is specified and the specified pid‐
file already exists and is locked by a running process, the dae‐
mon refuses to start. Specify --overwrite-pidfile to cause it to
instead overwrite the pidfile.
When --pidfile is not specified, this option has no effect.
--detach
Runs this program as a background process. The process forks,
and in the child it starts a new session, closes the standard
file descriptors (which has the side effect of disabling logging
to the console), and changes its current directory to the root
(unless --no-chdir is specified). After the child completes its
initialization, the parent exits.
--monitor
Creates an additional process to monitor this program. If it
dies due to a signal that indicates a programming error (SIGA‐‐
BRT, 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 func‐
tions without it.
--no-chdir
By default, when --detach is specified, the daemon changes its
current working directory to the root directory after it de‐
taches. Otherwise, invoking the daemon from a carelessly chosen
directory would prevent the administrator from unmounting the
file system that holds that directory.
Specifying --no-chdir suppresses this behavior, preventing the
daemon from changing its current working directory. This may be
useful for collecting core files, since it is common behavior to
write core dumps into the current working directory and the root
directory is not a good directory to use.
This option has no effect when --detach is not specified.
--no-self-confinement
By default this daemon will try to self-confine itself to work
with files under well-known directories determined at build
time. It is better to stick with this default behavior and not
to use this flag unless some other Access Control is used to
confine daemon. Note that in contrast to other access control
implementations that are typically enforced from kernel-space
(e.g. DAC or MAC), self-confinement is imposed from the user-
space daemon itself and hence should not be considered as a full
confinement strategy, but instead should be viewed as an addi‐
tional layer of security.
--user=user:group
Causes this program to run as a different user specified in
user:group, thus dropping most of the root privileges. Short
forms user and :group are also allowed, with current user or
group assumed, respectively. Only daemons started by the root
user accepts this argument.
On Linux, daemons will be granted CAP_IPC_LOCK and
CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICES before dropping root privileges. Daemons
that interact with a datapath, such as ovs-vswitchd, will be
granted 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.
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 speci‐
fied module.
• syslog, console, or file, to limit the log level change to
only to the system log, to the console, or to a file, re‐
spectively. (If --detach is specified, the daemon closes
its standard file descriptors, so logging to the console
will have no effect.)
• 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 --ver‐‐
bose=dbg.
-vPATTERN:destination:pattern
--verbose=PATTERN:destination:pattern
Sets the log pattern for destination to pattern. Refer to ovs-ap‐‐
pctl(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 lo‐‐
cal0 is used while sending a message to the target provided via
the --syslog-target option.
--log-file[=file]
Enables logging to a file. If file is specified, then it is used
as the exact name for the log file. The default log file name used
if file is omitted is /usr/local/var/log/ovn/program.log.
--syslog-target=host:port
Send syslog messages to UDP port on host, in addition to the sys‐
tem syslog. The host must be a numerical IP address, not a host‐
name.
--syslog-method=method
Specify method as how syslog messages should be sent to syslog
daemon. The following forms are supported:
• libc, to use the libc syslog() function. Downside of using
this options is that libc adds fixed prefix to every mes‐
sage before it is actually sent to the syslog daemon over
/dev/log UNIX domain socket.
• unix:file, to use a UNIX domain socket directly. It is pos‐
sible 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 ad‐
dress instead.
• udp:ip:port, to use a UDP socket. With this method it is
possible to use arbitrary message format also with older
rsyslogd. When sending syslog messages over UDP socket ex‐
tra precaution needs to be taken into account, for example,
syslog daemon needs to be configured to listen on the spec‐
ified UDP port, accidental iptables rules could be inter‐
fering with local syslog traffic and there are some secu‐
rity considerations that apply to UDP sockets, but do not
apply to UNIX domain sockets.
• null, to discard all messages logged to syslog.
The default is taken from the OVS_SYSLOG_METHOD environment vari‐
able; if it is unset, the default is libc.
PKI Options
PKI configuration is required to use SSL/TLS for connections to the
hardware_vtep and OVN Southbound databases.
-p privkey.pem
--private-key=privkey.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as
identity for outgoing SSL/TLS connections.
-c cert.pem
--certificate=cert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing a certificate that certi‐
fies the private key specified on -p or --private-key to be
trustworthy. The certificate must be signed by the certifi‐
cate authority (CA) that the peer in SSL/TLS connections
will use to verify it.
-C cacert.pem
--ca-cert=cacert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the CA certificate for ver‐
ifying certificates presented to this program by SSL/TLS
peers. (This may be the same certificate that SSL/TLS peers
use to verify the certificate specified on -c or --certifi‐‐
cate, 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/TLS
peers. This introduces a security risk, because it means
that certificates cannot be verified to be those of known
trusted hosts.
--ssl-server-name=servername
Specifies the server name to use for TLS Server Name Indi‐
cation (SNI). By default, the hostname from the connection
string is used for SNI. This option allows overriding the
SNI hostname, which is useful when connecting through prox‐
ies or service meshes where the connection endpoint differs
from the intended server name.
--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 the exe‐
cutable will attempt to obtain the CA certificate from
the SSL/TLS peer on its first SSL/TLS 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/TLS connections must be authenticated by
a certificate signed by the CA certificate thus obtained.
This option exposes the SSL/TLS 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/TLS peer sends its
CA certificate as part of the SSL/TLS certificate chain.
SSL/TLS protocols do 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/TLS peers. peer-cacert.pem
should be the CA certificate used to sign the program’s
own certificate, that is, the certificate specified on -c
or --certificate. If the program’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/TLS peer must already have the CA certificate for
the peer to have any confidence in the program’s iden‐
tity. However, this offers a way for a new installation
to bootstrap the CA certificate on its first SSL/TLS con‐
nection.
Other Options
--unixctl=socket
Sets the name of the control socket on which program listens for
runtime management commands (see RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS,
below). If socket does not begin with /, it is interpreted as
relative to . If --unixctl is not used at all, the default
socket is /program.pid.ctl, where pid is program’s process ID.
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
ovn-appctl can send the following commands to a running ovn-con‐‐
troller-vtep process:
exit Causes ovn-controller-vtep to gracefully terminate.
sb-connection-status
Prints whether the connection to the OVN Southbound data‐
base is currently connected.
vtep-connection-status
Prints whether the connection to the hardware_vtep data‐
base is currently connected.
CONFIGURATION
ovn-controller-vtep retrieves its configuration information from both
the OVN Southbound and hardware_vtep databases. The database locations
can be selected with the options described above. A database location
must take one of the following forms:
• ssl:host:port
The specified SSL/TLS port on the given host, which can
either be a DNS name (if built with unbound library) or
an IP address (IPv4 or IPv6). If host is an IPv6 address,
then wrap host with square brackets, e.g.:
ssl:[::1]:6640. The --private-key, --certificate and ei‐
ther of --ca-cert or --bootstrap-ca-cert options are
mandatory when this form is used.
• tcp:host:port
Connect to the given TCP port on host, where host can be
a DNS name (if built with unbound library) or IP address
(IPv4 or IPv6). If host is an IPv6 address, then wrap
host with square brackets, e.g.: tcp:[::1]:6640.
• unix:file
Connect to the Unix domain server socket named file.
ovn-controller-vtep reads the following keys from the Global table of
the connected hardware_vtep database:
other_config:ovn-match-northd-version
When this boolean value is true, ovn-controller-vtep
processes database changes only when its internal version
matches the northd internal version reported in the OVN
Southbound database. When the versions do not match, it
continues monitoring both databases but does not update
either one. Default: false.
other_config:ovn-remote-probe-interval
The inactivity probe interval of the connection to the
OVN Southbound database, in milliseconds. If the value is
zero, it disables the connection keepalive feature.
If the value is not specified, the default is 0 ms when
the connection does not need probes and 5000 ms other‐
wise. If the value is nonzero, then it will be forced to
a value of at least 1000 ms.
OVN 26.09.90 ovn-controller-vtep ovn-controller-vtep(8)