ovn-nbctl(8) OVN Manual ovn-nbctl(8)
NAME
ovn-nbctl - Open Virtual Network northbound db management utility
SYNOPSIS
ovn-nbctl [options] command [arg...]
DESCRIPTION
The ovn-nbctl program configures the OVN_Northbound database by provid‐
ing a high-level interface to its configuration database. See ovn-nb(5)
for comprehensive documentation of the database schema.
ovn-nbctl connects to an ovsdb-server process that maintains an
OVN_Northbound configuration database. Using this connection, it
queries and possibly applies changes to the database, depending on the
supplied commands.
ovn-nbctl can perform any number of commands in a single run, imple‐
mented as a single atomic transaction against the database.
The ovn-nbctl command line begins with global options (see OPTIONS be‐
low for details). The global options are followed by one or more com‐
mands. Each command should begin with -- by itself as a command-line
argument, to separate it from the following commands. (The -- before
the first command is optional.) The command itself starts with command-
specific options, if any, followed by the command name and any argu‐
ments.
DAEMON MODE
When it is invoked in the most ordinary way, ovn-nbctl connects to an
OVSDB server that hosts the northbound database, retrieves a partial
copy of the database that is complete enough to do its work, sends a
transaction request to the server, and receives and processes the
server’s reply. In common interactive use, this is fine, but if the
database is large, the step in which ovn-nbctl retrieves a partial copy
of the database can take a long time, which yields poor performance
overall.
To improve performance in such a case, ovn-nbctl offers a "daemon
mode," in which the user first starts ovn-nbctl running in the back‐
ground and afterward uses the daemon to execute operations. Over sev‐
eral ovn-nbctl command invocations, this performs better overall be‐
cause it retrieves a copy of the database only once at the beginning,
not once per program run.
Use the --detach option to start an ovn-nbctl daemon. With this option,
ovn-nbctl prints the name of a control socket to stdout. The client
should save this name in environment variable OVN_NB_DAEMON. Under the
Bourne shell this might be done like this:
export OVN_NB_DAEMON=$(ovn-nbctl --pidfile --detach)
When OVN_NB_DAEMON is set, ovn-nbctl automatically and transparently
uses the daemon to execute its commands.
When the daemon is no longer needed, kill it and unset the environment
variable, e.g.:
kill $(cat $OVN_RUNDIR/ovn-nbctl.pid)
unset OVN_NB_DAEMON
When using daemon mode, an alternative to the OVN_NB_DAEMON environment
variable is to specify a path for the Unix socket. When starting the
ovn-nbctl daemon, specify the -u option with a full path to the loca‐
tion of the socket file. Here is an exmple:
ovn-nbctl --detach -u /tmp/mysock.ctl
Then to connect to the running daemon, use the -u option with the full
path to the socket created when the daemon was started:
ovn-nbctl -u /tmp/mysock.ctl show
Daemon Commands
Daemon mode is internally implemented using the same mechanism used by
ovn-appctl. One may also use ovn-appctl directly with the following
commands:
run [options] command [arg...] [-- [options] command [arg...]
...]
Instructs the daemon process to run one or more ovn-nbctl
commands described above and reply with the results of
running these commands. Accepts the --no-wait, --wait,
--timeout, --dry-run, --oneline, and the options de‐
scribed under Table Formatting Options in addition to the
the command-specific options.
exit Causes ovn-nbctl to gracefully terminate.
OPTIONS
The options listed below affect the behavior of ovn-nbctl as a whole.
Some individual commands also accept their own options, which are given
just before the command name. If the first command on the command line
has options, then those options must be separated from the global op‐
tions by --.
ovn-nbctl also accepts options from the OVN_NBCTL_OPTIONS environment
variable, in the same format as on the command line. Options from the
command line override those in the environment.
--no-wait | --wait=none
--wait=sb
--wait=hv
These options control whether and how ovn-nbctl waits for
the OVN system to become up-to-date with changes made in an
ovn-nbctl invocation.
By default, or if --no-wait or --wait=none, ovn-nbctl exits
immediately after confirming that changes have been commit‐
ted to the northbound database, without waiting.
With --wait=sb, before ovn-nbctl exits, it waits for
ovn-northd to bring the southbound database up-to-date with
the northbound database updates.
With --wait=hv, before ovn-nbctl exits, it additionally
waits for all OVN chassis (hypervisors and gateways) to be‐
come up-to-date with the northbound database updates. (This
can become an indefinite wait if any chassis is malfunc‐
tioning.)
Ordinarily, --wait=sb or --wait=hv only waits for changes
by the current ovn-nbctl invocation to take effect. This
means that, if none of the commands supplied to ovn-nbctl
change the database, then the command does not wait at all.
Use the sync command to override this behavior.
--db database
The OVSDB database remote to contact. If the OVN_NB_DB en‐
vironment variable is set, its value is used as the de‐
fault. Otherwise, the default is unix:/ovnnb_db.sock, but
this default is unlikely to be useful outside of single-ma‐
chine OVN test environments.
--leader-only
--no-leader-only
By default, or with --leader-only, when the database server
is a clustered database, ovn-nbctl will avoid servers other
than the cluster leader. This ensures that any data that
ovn-nbctl reads and reports is up-to-date. With
--no-leader-only, ovn-nbctl will use any server in the
cluster, which means that for read-only transactions it can
report and act on stale data (transactions that modify the
database are always serialized even with --no-leader-only).
Refer to Understanding Cluster Consistency in ovsdb(7) for
more information.
--shuffle-remotes
--no-shuffle-remotes
By default, or with --shuffle-remotes, when there are mul‐
tiple remotes specified in the OVSDB connection string
specified by --db or the OVN_NB_DB environment variable,
the order of the remotes will be shuffled before the client
tries to connect. The remotes will be shuffled only once to
a new order before the first connection attempt. The fol‐
lowing retries, if any, will follow the same new order. The
default behavior is to make sure clients of a clustered
database can distribute evenly to all members of the clus‐
ter. With --no-shuffle-remotes, ovn-nbctl will use the
original order specified in the connection string to con‐
nect. This allows user to specify the preferred order,
which is particularly useful for testing.
--no-syslog
By default, ovn-nbctl logs its arguments and the details of
any changes that it makes to the system log. This option
disables this logging.
This option is equivalent to --verbose=nbctl:syslog:warn.
--oneline
Modifies the output format so that the output for each com‐
mand is printed on a single line. New-line characters that
would otherwise separate lines are printed as \fB\\n\fR,
and any instances of \fB\\\fR that would otherwise appear
in the output are doubled. Prints a blank line for each
command that has no output. This option does not affect the
formatting of output from the list or find commands; see
Table Formatting Options below.
--dry-run
Prevents ovn-nbctl from actually modifying the database.
-t secs
--timeout=secs
By default, or with a secs of 0, ovn-nbctl waits forever
for a response from the database. This option limits run‐
time to approximately secs seconds. If the timeout expires,
ovn-nbctl will exit with a SIGALRM signal. (A timeout would
normally happen only if the database cannot be contacted,
or if the system is overloaded.)
--print-wait-time
When --wait is specified, the option --print-wait-time can
be used to print the time spent on waiting, depending on
the value specified in --wait option. If --wait=sb is
specified, it prints "ovn-northd delay before processing",
which is the time between the Northbound DB update by the
command and the moment when ovn-northd starts processing
the update, and "ovn-northd completion", which is the time
between the Northbound DB update and the moment when
ovn-northd completes the Southbound DB updating success‐
fully. If --wait=hv is specified, in addition to the above
information, it also prints "ovn-controller(s) completion",
which is the time between the Northbound DB update and the
moment when the slowest hypervisor finishes processing the
update.
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.
On Windows, this option is not currently supported. For security
reasons, specifying this option will cause the daemon process
not to start.
Logging options
-v[spec]
--verbose=[spec]
Sets logging levels. Without any spec, sets the log level for
every module and destination to dbg. Otherwise, spec is a list of
words separated by spaces or commas or colons, up to one from each
category below:
• A valid module name, as displayed by the vlog/list command
on ovs-appctl(8), limits the log level change to the 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.)
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 --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.
Table Formatting Options
These options control the format of output from the list and find com‐
mands.
-f format
--format=format
Sets the type of table formatting. The following types of
format are available:
table 2-D text tables with aligned columns.
list (default)
A list with one column per line and rows separated
by a blank line.
html HTML tables.
csv Comma-separated values as defined in RFC 4180.
json JSON format as defined in RFC 4627. The output is a
sequence of JSON objects, each of which corresponds
to one table. Each JSON object has the following
members with the noted values:
caption
The table’s caption. This member is omitted
if the table has no caption.
headings
An array with one element per table column.
Each array element is a string giving the
corresponding column’s heading.
data An array with one element per table row. Each
element is also an array with one element per
table column. The elements of this second-
level array are the cells that constitute the
table. Cells that represent OVSDB data or
data types are expressed in the format de‐
scribed in the OVSDB specification; other
cells are simply expressed as text strings.
-d format
--data=format
Sets the formatting for cells within output tables unless
the table format is set to json, in which case json format‐
ting is always used when formatting cells. The following
types of format are available:
string (default)
The simple format described in the Database Values
section of ovs-vsctl(8).
bare The simple format with punctuation stripped off: []
and {} are omitted around sets, maps, and empty
columns, items within sets and maps are space-sepa‐
rated, and strings are never quoted. This format may
be easier for scripts to parse.
json The RFC 4627 JSON format as described above.
--no-headings
This option suppresses the heading row that otherwise ap‐
pears in the first row of table output.
--pretty
By default, JSON in output is printed as compactly as pos‐
sible. This option causes JSON in output to be printed in a
more readable fashion. Members of objects and elements of
arrays are printed one per line, with indentation.
This option does not affect JSON in tables, which is always
printed compactly.
--bare
Equivalent to --format=list --data=bare --no-headings.
PKI Options
PKI configuration is required to use SSL for the connection to the
database.
-p privkey.pem
--private-key=privkey.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as
identity for outgoing SSL connections.
-c cert.pem
--certificate=cert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing a certificate that 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 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 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 the exe‐
cutable 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 immedi‐
ately drop the connection and reconnect, and from then on
all SSL connections must be authenticated by a certifi‐
cate 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 cer‐
tificate.
This option is mutually exclusive with -C and --ca-cert.
Other Options
-h
--help
Prints a brief help message to the console.
-V
--version
Prints version information to the console.
COMMANDS
The following sections describe the commands that ovn-nbctl supports.
General Commands
init Initializes the database, if it is empty. If the database has
already been initialized, this command has no effect.
show [switch | router]
Prints a brief overview of the database contents. If switch is
provided, only records related to that logical switch are shown.
If router is provided, only records related to that logical
router are shown.
Logical Switch Commands
ls-add Creates a new, unnamed logical switch, which initially has no
ports. The switch does not have a name, other commands must re‐
fer to this switch by its UUID.
[--may-exist | --add-duplicate] ls-add switch
Creates a new logical switch named switch, which initially has
no ports.
The OVN northbound database schema does not require logical
switch names to be unique, but the whole point to the names is
to provide an easy way for humans to refer to the switches, mak‐
ing duplicate names unhelpful. Thus, without any options, this
command regards it as an error if switch is a duplicate name.
With --may-exist, adding a duplicate name succeeds but does not
create a new logical switch. With --add-duplicate, the command
really creates a new logical switch with a duplicate name. It is
an error to specify both options. If there are multiple logical
switches with a duplicate name, configure the logical switches
using the UUID instead of the switch name.
[--if-exists] ls-del switch
Deletes switch. It is an error if switch does not exist, unless
--if-exists is specified.
ls-list
Lists all existing switches on standard output, one per line.
ACL Commands
These commands operates on ACL objects for a given entity. The entity
can be either a logical switch or a port group. The entity can be spec‐
ified as uuid or name. The --type option can be used to specify the
type of the entity, in case both a logical switch and a port groups ex‐
ist with the same name specified for entity. type must be either switch
or port-group.
[--type={switch | port-group}] [--log] [--meter=meter] [--sever‐‐
ity=severity] [--name=name] [--label=label] [--sample-new=sam
ple] [--sample-est=sample] [--may-exist] [--apply-after-lb]
[--tier] acl-add entity direction priority match verdict
Adds the specified ACL to entity. direction must be ei‐
ther from-lport or to-lport. priority must be between 0
and 32767, inclusive. A full description of the fields
are in ovn-nb(5). If --may-exist is specified, adding a
duplicated ACL succeeds but the ACL is not really cre‐
ated. Without --may-exist, adding a duplicated ACL re‐
sults in error.
The --log option enables packet logging for the ACL. The
options --severity and --name specify a severity and
name, respectively, for log entries (and also enable log‐
ging). The severity must be one of alert, warning, no‐‐
tice, info, or debug. If a severity is not specified, the
default is info. The --meter=meter option is used to
rate-limit packet logging. The meter argument names a me‐
ter configured by meter-add.
The --sample-new (and optionally --sample-est) enable ACL
sampling. A valid uuid of a row of the Sample table must
be provided.
The --apply-after-lb option sets apply-after-lb=true in
the options column of the ACL table. As the option name
suggests, the ACL will be applied after the logical
switch load balancer stage.
The --tier option sets the ACL’s tier to the specified
value. For more information about ACL tiers, see the doc‐
umentation for the ovn-nb(5) database.
[--type={switch | port-group}] [--tier] acl-del entity [direc
tion [priority match]]
Deletes ACLs from entity. If only entity is supplied, all
the ACLs from the entity are deleted. If direction is
also specified, then all the flows in that direction will
be deleted from the entity. If all the fields are given,
then a single flow that matches all the fields will be
deleted.
If the --tier option is provided, then only ACLs of the
given tier value will be deleted, in addition to whatever
other criteria have been provided.
[--type={switch | port-group}] acl-list entity
Lists the ACLs on entity.
Logical Switch QoS Rule Commands
[--may-exist] qos-add switch direction priority match [mark=mark]
[dscp=dscp] [rate=rate [burst=burst]]
Adds QoS marking and metering rules to switch. direction must be
either from-lport or to-lport. priority must be between 0 and
32767, inclusive.
If dscp=dscp is specified, then matching packets will have DSCP
marking applied. dscp must be between 0 and 63, inclusive. If
rate=rate is specified then matching packets will have metering
applied at rate kbps. If metering is configured, then
burst=burst specifies the burst rate limit in kilobits. dscp
and/or rate are required arguments. If mark=mark is specified,
then matching packets will be marked (through pkt.mark). mark
must be a positive integer.
If --may-exist is specified, adding a duplicated QoS rule suc‐
ceeds but the QoS rule is not really created. Without --may-ex‐‐
ist, adding a duplicated QoS rule results in error.
qos-del switch [direction [priority match]]
Deletes QoS rules from switch. If only switch is supplied, all
the QoS rules from the logical switch are deleted. If direction
is also specified, then all the flows in that direction will be
deleted from the logical switch. If all the fields are supplied,
then a single flow that matches the given fields will be
deleted.
If switch and uuid are supplied, then the QoS rule with speci‐
fied uuid is deleted.
qos-list switch
Lists the QoS rules on switch.
Meter Commands
meter-add name action rate unit [burst]
Adds the specified meter. name must be a unique name to identify
this meter. The action argument specifies what should happen
when this meter is exceeded. The only supported action is drop.
The unit specifies the unit for the rate argument; valid values
are kbps and pktps for kilobits per second and packets per sec‐
ond, respectively. The burst option configures the maximum burst
allowed for the band in kilobits or packets depending on whether
the unit chosen was kbps or pktps, respectively. If a burst is
not supplied, the switch is free to select some reasonable value
depending on its configuration.
ovn-nbctl only supports adding a meter with a single band, but
the other commands support meters with multiple bands.
Names that start with "__" (two underscores) are reserved for
internal use by OVN, so ovn-nbctl does not allow adding them.
meter-del [name]
Deletes meters. By default, all meters are deleted. If name is
supplied, only the meter with that name will be deleted.
meter-list
Lists all meters.
Logical Switch Port Commands
[--may-exist] lsp-add switch port
Creates on lswitch a new logical switch port named port.
It is an error if a logical port named port already exists, un‐
less --may-exist is specified. Regardless of --may-exist, it is
an error if the existing port is in some logical switch other
than switch or if it has a parent port.
[--may-exist] lsp-add switch port parent tag_request
Creates on switch a logical switch port named port that is a
child of parent that is identified with VLAN ID tag_request,
which must be between 0 and 4095, inclusive. If tag_request is
0, ovn-northd generates a tag that is unique in the scope of
parent. This is useful in cases such as virtualized container
environments where Open vSwitch does not have a direct connec‐
tion to the container’s port and it must be shared with the vir‐
tual machine’s port.
It is an error if a logical port named port already exists, un‐
less --may-exist is specified. Regardless of --may-exist, it is
an error if the existing port is not in switch or if it does not
have the specified parent and tag_request.
[--if-exists] lsp-del port
Deletes port. It is an error if port does not exist, unless
--if-exists is specified.
lsp-list switch
Lists all the logical switch ports within switch on standard
output, one per line.
lsp-get-parent port
If set, get the parent port of port. If not set, print nothing.
lsp-get-tag port
If set, get the tag for port traffic. If not set, print nothing.
lsp-set-addresses port [address]...
Sets the addresses associated with port to address. Each address
should be one of the following:
an Ethernet address, optionally followed by a space and one or
more IP addresses
OVN delivers packets for the Ethernet address to this
port.
unknown
OVN delivers unicast Ethernet packets whose destination
MAC address is not in any logical port’s addresses column
to ports with address unknown.
dynamic
Use this keyword to make ovn-northd generate a globally
unique MAC address and choose an unused IPv4 address with
the logical port’s subnet and store them in the port’s
dynamic_addresses column.
router Accepted only when the type of the logical switch port is
router. This indicates that the Ethernet, IPv4, and IPv6
addresses for this logical switch port should be obtained
from the connected logical router port, as specified by
router-port in lsp-set-options.
Multiple addresses may be set. If no address argument is given,
port will have no addresses associated with it.
lsp-get-addresses port
Lists all the addresses associated with port on standard output,
one per line.
lsp-set-port-security port [addrs]...
Sets the port security addresses associated with port to addrs.
Multiple sets of addresses may be set by using multiple addrs
arguments. If no addrs argument is given, port will not have
port security enabled.
Port security limits the addresses from which a logical port may
send packets and to which it may receive packets. See the
ovn-nb(5) documentation for the port_security column in the Log‐‐
ical_Switch_Port table for details.
lsp-get-port-security port
Lists all the port security addresses associated with port on
standard output, one per line.
lsp-get-up port
Prints the state of port, either up or down.
lsp-set-enabled port state
Set the administrative state of port, either enabled or dis‐‐
abled. When a port is disabled, no traffic is allowed into or
out of the port.
lsp-get-enabled port
Prints the administrative state of port, either enabled or dis‐‐
abled.
lsp-set-type port type
Set the type for the logical port. The type must be one of the
following:
(empty string)
A VM (or VIF) interface.
router A connection to a logical router.
localnet
A connection to a locally accessible network from each
ovn-controller instance. A logical switch can only have a
single localnet port attached. This is used to model di‐
rect connectivity to an existing network.
localport
A connection to a local VIF. Traffic that arrives on a
localport is never forwarded over a tunnel to another
chassis. These ports are present on every chassis and
have the same address in all of them. This is used to
model connectivity to local services that run on every
hypervisor.
l2gateway
A connection to a physical network.
vtep A port to a logical switch on a VTEP gateway.
lsp-get-type port
Get the type for the logical port.
lsp-set-options port [key=value]...
Set type-specific key-value options for the logical port.
lsp-get-options port
Get the type-specific options for the logical port.
lsp-set-dhcpv4-options port dhcp_options
Set the DHCPv4 options for the logical port. The dhcp_options is
a UUID referring to a set of DHCP options in the DHCP_Options
table.
lsp-get-dhcpv4-options port
Get the configured DHCPv4 options for the logical port.
lsp-set-dhcpv6-options port dhcp_options
Set the DHCPv6 options for the logical port. The dhcp_options is
a UUID referring to a set of DHCP options in the DHCP_Options
table.
lsp-get-dhcpv6-options port
Get the configured DHCPv6 options for the logical port.
lsp-get-ls port
Get the logical switch which the port belongs to.
lsp-attach-mirror port m
Attaches the mirror m to the logical port port.
lsp-detach-mirror port m
Detaches the mirror m from the logical port port.
Forwarding Group Commands
[--liveness]fwd-group-add group switch vip vmac ports
Creates a new forwarding group named group as the name with the
provided vip and vmac. vip should be a virtual IP address and
vmac should be a virtual MAC address to access the forwarding
group. ports are the logical switch port names that are put in
the forwarding group. Example for ports is lsp1 lsp2 ... Traffic
destined to virtual IP of the forwarding group will be load bal‐
anced to all the child ports.
When --liveness is specified then child ports are expected to be
bound to external devices like routers. BFD should be configured
between hypervisors and the external devices. The child port se‐
lection will become dependent on BFD status with its external
device.
[--if-exists] fwd-group-del group
Deletes group. It is an error if group does not exist, unless
--if-exists is specified.
fwd-group-list [switch]
Lists all existing forwarding groups, If switch is specified
then only the forwarding groups configured for switch will be
listed.
Logical Router Commands
lr-add Creates a new, unnamed logical router, which initially has no
ports. The router does not have a name, other commands must re‐
fer to this router by its UUID.
[--may-exist | --add-duplicate] lr-add router
Creates a new logical router named router, which initially has
no ports.
The OVN northbound database schema does not require logical
router names to be unique, but the whole point to the names is
to provide an easy way for humans to refer to the routers, mak‐
ing duplicate names unhelpful. Thus, without any options, this
command regards it as an error if router is a duplicate name.
With --may-exist, adding a duplicate name succeeds but does not
create a new logical router. With --add-duplicate, the command
really creates a new logical router with a duplicate name. It is
an error to specify both options. If there are multiple logical
routers with a duplicate name, configure the logical routers us‐
ing the UUID instead of the router name.
[--if-exists] lr-del router
Deletes router. It is an error if router does not exist, unless
--if-exists is specified.
lr-list
Lists all existing routers on standard output, one per line.
Logical Router Port Commands
[--may-exist] lrp-add router port mac network... [peer=peer]
Creates on router a new logical router port named port with Eth‐
ernet address mac and one or more IP address/netmask for each
network.
The optional argument peer identifies a logical router port that
connects to this one. The following example adds a router port
with an IPv4 and IPv6 address with peer lr1:
lrp-add lr0 lrp0 00:11:22:33:44:55 192.168.0.1/24 2001:db8::1/64
peer=lr1
It is an error if a logical router port named port already ex‐
ists, unless --may-exist is specified. Regardless of --may-ex‐‐
ist, it is an error if the existing router port is in some logi‐
cal router other than router.
[--if-exists] lrp-del port
Deletes port. It is an error if port does not exist, unless
--if-exists is specified.
lrp-list router
Lists all the logical router ports within router on standard
output, one per line.
lrp-set-enabled port state
Set the administrative state of port, either enabled or dis‐‐
abled. When a port is disabled, no traffic is allowed into or
out of the port.
lrp-get-enabled port
Prints the administrative state of port, either enabled or dis‐‐
abled.
lrp-set-gateway-chassis port chassis [priority]
Set gateway chassis for port. chassis is the name of the chas‐
sis. This creates a gateway chassis entry in Gateway_Chassis ta‐
ble. It won’t check if chassis really exists in OVN_Southbound
database. Priority will be set to 0 if priority is not provided
by user. priority must be between 0 and 32767, inclusive.
lrp-del-gateway-chassis port chassis
Deletes gateway chassis from port. It is an error if gateway
chassis with chassis for port does not exist.
lrp-get-gateway-chassis port
Lists all the gateway chassis with priority within port on stan‐
dard output, one per line, ordered based on priority.
Logical Router Static Route Commands
[--may-exist] [--policy=POLICY] [--ecmp] [--ecmp-symmetric-reply]
[--bfd[=UUID]] lr-route-add router prefix nexthop [port]
Adds the specified route to router. prefix describes an IPv4 or
IPv6 prefix for this route, such as 192.168.100.0/24. nexthop
specifies the gateway to use for this route, which should be the
IP address of one of router logical router ports or the IP ad‐
dress of a logical port. If port is specified, packets that
match this route will be sent out that port. When port is omit‐
ted, OVN infers the output port based on nexthop. Nexthop can be
set to discard for dropping packets which match the given route.
--policy describes the policy used to make routing decisions.
This should be one of "dst-ip" or "src-ip". If not specified,
the default is "dst-ip".
The --ecmp option allows for multiple routes with the same pre
fix POLICY but different nexthop and port to be added.
The --ecmp-symmetric-reply option makes it so that traffic that
arrives over an ECMP route will have its reply traffic sent out
over that same route. Setting --ecmp-symmetric-reply implies
--ecmp so it is not necessary to set both.
--bfd option is used to link a BFD session to the OVN route. If
the BFD session UUID is provided, it will be used for the OVN
route otherwise the next-hop will be used to perform a lookup in
the OVN BFD table. If the lookup fails and port is specified, a
new entry in the BFD table will be created using the nexthop as
dst_ip and port as logical_port.
It is an error if a route with prefix and POLICY already exists,
unless --may-exist, --ecmp, or --ecmp-symmetric-reply is speci‐
fied. If --may-exist is specified but not --ecmp or --ecmp-sym‐‐
metric-reply, the existed route will be updated with the new
nexthop and port. If --ecmp or --ecmp-symmetric-reply is speci‐
fied, a new route will be added, regardless of the existed
route., which is useful when adding ECMP routes, i.e. routes
with same POLICY and prefix but different nexthop and port.
[--if-exists] [--policy=POLICY] lr-route-del router [prefix [nexthop
[port]]]
Deletes routes from router. If only router is supplied, all the
routes from the logical router are deleted. If POLICY, prefix,
nexthop and/or port are also specified, then all the routes that
match the conditions will be deleted from the logical router.
It is an error if there is no matching route entry, unless
--if-exists is specified.
lr-route-list router
Lists the routes on router.
Logical Router Policy Commands
[--may-exist] [--bfd] lr-policy-add router priority match action [nex
thop[,nexthop,...]] [options key=value]]
Add Policy to router which provides a way to configure per‐
mit/deny and reroute policies on the router. Permit/deny poli‐
cies are similar to OVN ACLs, but exist on the logical-router.
Reroute policies are needed for service-insertion and service-
chaining. nexthop is an optional parameter. It needs to be pro‐
vided only when action is reroute. Multiple nexthops can be
specified for ECMP routing. A policy is uniquely identified by
priority and match. Multiple policies can have the same prior
ity. options sets the router policy options as key-value pair.
The supported option is : pkt_mark.
If --may-exist is specified, adding a duplicated routing policy
with the same priority and match string is not really created.
Without --may-exist, adding a duplicated routing policy results
in error.
--bfd option is used to link a BFD session to the OVN reroute
policy. OVN will look for an already running BFD session using
next-hop as lookup key in the BFD table. If the lookup fails, a
new entry in the BFD table will be created using the nexthop as
dst_ip.
The following example shows a policy to lr1, which will drop
packets from192.168.100.0/24.
lr-policy-add lr1 100 ip4.src == 192.168.100.0/24 drop.
lr-policy-add lr1 100 ip4.src == 192.168.100.0/24 allow
pkt_mark=100 .
[--if-exists] lr-policy-del router [{priority | uuid} [match]]
Deletes polices from router. If only router is supplied, all the
polices from the logical router are deleted. If priority and/or
match are also specified, then all the polices that match the
conditions will be deleted from the logical router.
If router and uuid are supplied, then the policy with specified
uuid is deleted. It is an error if uuid does not exist, unless
--if-exists is specified.
lr-policy-list router
Lists the polices on router.
NAT Commands
[--may-exist] [--stateless] [--gateway-port=GATEWAY_PORT] [-portrange]
[--match=MATCH] [--priority=PRIORITY] lr-nat-add router type exter
nal_ip logical_ip [logical_port external_mac] [external_port_range]
Adds the specified NAT to router. The type must be one of snat,
dnat, or dnat_and_snat. The external_ip is an IPv4 address. The
logical_ip is an IPv4 network (e.g 192.168.1.0/24) or an IPv4
address. The logical_port and external_mac are only accepted
when router is a distributed router (rather than a gateway
router) and type is dnat_and_snat. The logical_port is the name
of an existing logical switch port where the logical_ip resides.
The external_mac is an Ethernet address.
When --stateless is specified then it implies that we will be
not use connection tracker, i.e internal ip and external ip are
1:1 mapped. This implies that --stateless is applicable only to
dnat_and_snat type NAT rules. An external ip with --stateless
NAT cannot be shared with any other NAT rule.
--gateway-port option allows specifying the distributed gateway
port of router where the NAT rule needs to be applied. GATE
WAY_PORT should reference a Logical_Router_Port row that is a
distributed gateway port of router. When router has multiple
distributed gateway ports and the gateway port for this NAT
can’t be inferred from the external_ip, it is an error to not
specify the GATEWAY_PORT.
If the --portrange option is specified, then a range of ports
may be specified in the external_port_range part of the
lr-nat-add command. If this option is omitted, then an external
port range may not be specified. The format of the port range is
port_low-port_high, where port_low is a lower number than
port_high. When the packet is NATted, a random port from the
range will be selected as the source port. The range for the ex‐‐
ternal_port_range is 1-65535.
The --match allows to specify the extra match condition. The ex‐
tra match is for more fine-grained control over the NAT rule.
The --priority option allows to specify order of NAT rule evalu‐
ation. Priority must be between 0 and 32767, inclusive and can
be only specified together with --match.
When type is dnat, the externally visible IP address external_ip
is DNATted to the IP address logical_ip in the logical space.
When type is snat, IP packets with their source IP address that
either matches the IP address in logical_ip or is in the network
provided by logical_ip is SNATed into the IP address in exter
nal_ip.
When type is dnat_and_snat, the externally visible IP address
external_ip is DNATted to the IP address logical_ip in the logi‐
cal space. In addition, IP packets with the source IP address
that matches logical_ip is SNATed into the IP address in exter
nal_ip.
When the logical_port and external_mac are specified, the NAT
rule will be programmed on the chassis where the logical_port
resides. This includes ARP replies for the external_ip, which
return the value of external_mac. All packets transmitted with
source IP address equal to external_ip will be sent using the
external_mac.
It is an error if a NAT already exists with the same values of
router, type, external_ip, logical_ip and GATEWAY_PORT (in case
of multiple distributed gateway ports), unless --may-exist is
specified. When --may-exist, logical_port, and external_mac are
all specified, the existing values of logical_port and exter
nal_mac are overwritten.
[--if-exists] lr-nat-del router [type [ip] [gateway_port]]
Deletes NATs from router. If only router is supplied, all the
NATs from the logical router are deleted. If type is also speci‐
fied, then all the NATs that match the type will be deleted from
the logical router. If ip is also specified without specifying
gateway_port, then all the NATs that match the type and ip will
be deleted from the logical router. If gateway_port is specified
without specifying ip, then all the NATs that match the type and
gateway_port will be deleted from the logical router. If all the
fields are given, then a single NAT rule that matches all the
fields will be deleted. When type is snat, the ip should be log‐
ical_ip. When type is dnat or dnat_and_snat, the ip should be
external_ip.
It is an error if both ip and gateway_port are specified and
there is no matching NAT entry, unless --if-exists is specified.
lr-nat-list router
Lists the NATs on router.
Load Balancer Commands
[--may-exist | --add-duplicate | --reject | --event] lb-add lb vip ips
[protocol]
Creates a new load balancer named lb with the provided vip and
ips or adds the vip to an existing lb. vip should be a virtual
IP address (or an IP address and a port number with : as a sepa‐
rator). Examples for vip are 192.168.1.4, fd0f::1, and
192.168.1.5:8080. ips should be comma separated IP endpoints (or
comma separated IP addresses and port numbers with : as a sepa‐
rator). ips must be the same address family as vip. Examples for
ips are 10.0.0.1,10.0.0.2or [fdef::1]:8800,[fdef::2]:8800.
The optional argument protocol must be either tcp, udp or sctp.
This argument is useful when a port number is provided as part
of the vip. If the protocol is unspecified and a port number is
provided as part of the vip, OVN assumes the protocol to be tcp.
It is an error if the vip already exists in the load balancer
named lb, unless --may-exist is specified. With --add-duplicate,
the command really creates a new load balancer with a duplicate
name.
If the load balancer is created with --reject option and it has
no active backends, a TCP reset segment (for tcp) or an ICMP
port unreachable packet (for all other kind of traffic) will be
sent whenever an incoming packet is received for this load-bal‐
ancer. Please note using --reject option will disable empty_lb
SB controller event for this load balancer.
If the load balancer is created with --event option and it has
no active backends, whenever the lb receives traffic, the event
is reported in the Controller_Event table in the SB db. Please
note --event option can’t be specified with --reject one.
The following example adds a load balancer.
lb-add lb0 30.0.0.10:80
192.168.10.10:80,192.168.10.20:80,192.168.10.30:80 udp
[--if-exists] lb-del lb [vip]
Deletes lb or the vip from lb. If vip is supplied, only the vip
will be deleted from the lb. If only the lb is supplied, the lb
will be deleted. It is an error if vip does not already exist in
lb, unless --if-exists is specified.
lb-list [lb]
Lists the LBs. If lb is also specified, then only the specified
lb will be listed.
[--may-exist] ls-lb-add switch lb
Adds the specified lb to switch. It is an error if a load bal‐
ancer named lb already exists in the switch, unless --may-exist
is specified.
[--if-exists] ls-lb-del switch [lb]
Removes lb from switch. If only switch is supplied, all the LBs
from the logical switch are removed. If lb is also specified,
then only the lb will be removed from the logical switch. It is
an error if lb does not exist in the switch, unless --if-exists
is specified.
ls-lb-list switch
Lists the LBs for the given switch.
[--may-exist] lr-lb-add router lb
Adds the specified lb to router. It is an error if a load bal‐
ancer named lb already exists in the router, unless --may-exist
is specified.
[--if-exists] lr-lb-del router [lb]
Removes lb from router. If only router is supplied, all the LBs
from the logical router are removed. If lb is also specified,
then only the lb will be removed from the logical router. It is
an error if lb does not exist in the router, unless --if-exists
is specified.
lr-lb-list router
Lists the LBs for the given router.
DHCP Options commands
dhcp-options-create cidr [key=value]
Creates a new DHCP Options entry in the DHCP_Options table with
the specified cidr and optional external-ids.
dhcp-options-list
Lists the DHCP Options entries.
dhcp-options-del dhcp-option
Deletes the DHCP Options entry referred by dhcp-option UUID.
dhcp-options-set-options dhcp-option [key=value]...
Set the DHCP Options for the dhcp-option UUID.
dhcp-options-get-options dhcp-option
Lists the DHCP Options for the dhcp-option UUID.
Port Group commands
pg-add group [port]...
Creates a new port group in the Port_Group table named group
with optional ports added to the group.
pg-set-ports group port...
Sets ports on the port group named group. It is an error if
group does not exist.
pg-del group
Deletes port group group. It is an error if group does not ex‐
ist.
HA Chassis Group commands
ha-chassis-group-add group
Creates a new HA chassis group in the HA_Chassis_Group table
named group.
ha-chassis-group-del group
Deletes the HA chassis group group. It is an error if group does
not exist.
ha-chassis-group-list [ha-chassis-group]
Lists all HA chassis groups along with the HA chassis if any as‐
sociated with it. If ha-chassis-group is also specified, then
only the specified ha-chassis-group will be listed.
ha-chassis-group-add-chassis group chassis priority
Adds a new HA chassis chassis to the HA Chassis group group with
the specified priority. If the chassis already exists, then the
priority is updated. The chassis should be the name of the chas‐
sis in the OVN_Southbound.
ha-chassis-group-remove-chassis group chassis
Removes the HA chassis chassis from the HA chassis group group.
It is an error if chassis does not exist.
Control Plane Protection Policy commands
These commands manage meters configured in Copp table linking them to
logical datapaths through copp column in Logical_Switch or Logi‐‐
cal_Router tables. Protocol packets for which CoPP is enforced when
sending packets to ovn-controller (if configured):
• ARP
• ND_NS
• ND_NA
• ND_RA
• ND
• DNS
• IGMP
• packets that require ARP resolution before forwarding
• packets that require ND_NS before forwarding
• packets that need to be replied to with ICMP Errors
• packets that need to be replied to with TCP RST
• packets that need to be replied to with DHCP_OPTS
• packets that trigger a reject action
• packets that trigger a SCTP abort action
• controller_events
• BFD
copp-add name proto meter
Adds the control proto to meter mapping to the control
plane protection policy name. If no policy exists yet, it
creates one. If a mapping already existed for proto, this
will overwrite it.
copp-del name [proto]
Removes the control proto mapping for the name control
plane protection policy. If proto is not specified, the
whole control plane protection policy is destroyed.
copp-list name
Display the current control plane protection policy for
name.
ls-copp-add name switch
Adds the control plane protection policy name to the log‐
ical switch switch.
lr-copp-add name router
Adds the control plane protection policy name to the log‐
ical router router.
Mirror commands
mirror-add m type [index] filter dest
Creates a new mirror in the Mirror table with the name m with
the below mandatory arguments.
type specifies the mirror type - gre , erspan or local.
index specifies the tunnel index value (which is an integer) if
the type is gre or erspan.
filter specifies the mirror source selection. Can be from-lport,
to-lport or both.
dest specifies the mirror destination IP (v4 or v6) if the type
is gre or erspan. For a type of local, this field defines a lo‐
cal interface on the OVS integration bridge to be used as the
mirror destination. The interface must possess external-ids:mir‐
ror-id that matches this string.
mirror-del m
Deletes the mirror m.
mirror-list
Lists the mirrors.
Synchronization Commands
sync Ordinarily, --wait=sb or --wait=hv only waits for changes by the
current ovn-nbctl invocation to take effect. This means that, if
none of the commands supplied to ovn-nbctl change the database,
then the command does not wait at all. With the sync command,
however, ovn-nbctl waits even for earlier changes to the data‐
base to propagate down to the southbound database or all of the
OVN chassis, according to the argument to --wait.
Remote Connectivity Commands
These commands manipulate the connections column in the NB_Global table
and rows in the Connection table. When ovsdb-server is configured to
use the connections column for OVSDB connections, this allows the ad‐
ministrator to use ovn-nbctl to configure database connections.
get-connection
Prints the configured connection(s).
del-connection
Deletes the configured connection(s).
[--inactivity-probe=msecs] set-connection target...
Sets the configured manager target or targets. Use --in‐‐
activity-probe=msecs to override the default idle connec‐
tion inactivity probe time. Use 0 to disable inactivity
probes.
SSL Configuration Commands
get-ssl
Prints the SSL configuration.
del-ssl
Deletes the current SSL configuration.
[--bootstrap] set-ssl private-key certificate ca-cert [ssl-protocol-
list [ssl-cipher-list]]
Sets the SSL configuration.
Database Commands
These commands query and modify the contents of ovsdb tables. They are
a slight abstraction of the ovsdb interface and as such they operate at
a lower level than other ovn-nbctl commands.
Identifying Tables, Records, and Columns
Each of these commands has a table parameter to identify a table within
the database. Many of them also take a record parameter that identifies
a particular record within a table. The record parameter may be the
UUID for a record, which may be abbreviated to its first 4 (or more)
hex digits, as long as that is unique. Many tables offer additional
ways to identify records. Some commands also take column parameters
that identify a particular field within the records in a table.
For a list of tables and their columns, see ovn-nb(5) or see the table
listing from the --help option.
Record names must be specified in full and with correct capitalization,
except that UUIDs may be abbreviated to their first 4 (or more) hex
digits, as long as that is unique within the table. Names of tables and
columns are not case-sensitive, and - and _ are treated interchange‐
ably. Unique abbreviations of table and column names are acceptable,
e.g. d or dhcp is sufficient to identify the DHCP_Options table.
Database Values
Each column in the database accepts a fixed type of data. The currently
defined basic types, and their representations, are:
integer
A decimal integer in the range -2**63 to 2**63-1, inclu‐
sive.
real A floating-point number.
Boolean
True or false, written true or false, respectively.
string An arbitrary Unicode string, except that null bytes are
not allowed. Quotes are optional for most strings that
begin with an English letter or underscore and consist
only of letters, underscores, hyphens, and periods. How‐
ever, true and false and strings that match the syntax of
UUIDs (see below) must be enclosed in double quotes to
distinguish them from other basic types. When double
quotes are used, the syntax is that of strings in JSON,
e.g. backslashes may be used to escape special charac‐
ters. The empty string must be represented as a pair of
double quotes ("").
UUID Either a universally unique identifier in the style of
RFC 4122, e.g. f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6, or
an @name defined by a get or create command within the
same ovs-vsctl invocation.
Multiple values in a single column may be separated by spaces or a sin‐
gle comma. When multiple values are present, duplicates are not al‐
lowed, and order is not important. Conversely, some database columns
can have an empty set of values, represented as [], and square brackets
may optionally enclose other non-empty sets or single values as well.
A few database columns are ``maps’’ of key-value pairs, where the key
and the value are each some fixed database type. These are specified in
the form key=value, where key and value follow the syntax for the col‐
umn’s key type and value type, respectively. When multiple pairs are
present (separated by spaces or a comma), duplicate keys are not al‐
lowed, and again the order is not important. Duplicate values are al‐
lowed. An empty map is represented as {}. Curly braces may optionally
enclose non-empty maps as well (but use quotes to prevent the shell
from expanding other-config={0=x,1=y} into other-config=0=x other-con‐‐
fig=1=y, which may not have the desired effect).
Database Command Syntax
[--if-exists] [--columns=column[,column]...] list table
[record]...
Lists the data in each specified record. If no records
are specified, lists all the records in table.
If --columns is specified, only the requested columns are
listed, in the specified order. Otherwise, all columns
are listed, in alphabetical order by column name.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if any specified
record does not exist. With --if-exists, the command ig‐
nores any record that does not exist, without producing
any output.
[--columns=column[,column]...] find table [col
umn[:key]=value]...
Lists the data in each record in table whose column
equals value or, if key is specified, whose column con‐
tains a key with the specified value. The following oper‐
ators may be used where = is written in the syntax sum‐
mary:
= != gt;>gt; = >gt;>gt;=
Selects records in which column[:key] equals, does
not equal, is less than, is greater than, is less
than or equal to, or is greater than or equal to
value, respectively.
Consider column[:key] and value as sets of ele‐
ments. Identical sets are considered equal. Other‐
wise, if the sets have different numbers of ele‐
ments, then the set with more elements is consid‐
ered to be larger. Otherwise, consider a element
from each set pairwise, in increasing order within
each set. The first pair that differs determines
the result. (For a column that contains key-value
pairs, first all the keys are compared, and values
are considered only if the two sets contain iden‐
tical keys.)
{=} {!=}
Test for set equality or inequality, respectively.
{=} Selects records in which column[:key] is a subset
of value. For example, flood-vlans{=}1,2 selects
records in which the flood-vlans column is the
empty set or contains 1 or 2 or both.
{} Selects records in which column[:key] is a proper
subset of value. For example, flood-vlans{}1,2
selects records in which the flood-vlans column is
the empty set or contains 1 or 2 but not both.
{>gt;>gt;=} {>gt;>gt;}
Same as {=} and {}, respectively, except that
the relationship is reversed. For example,
flood-vlans{>gt;>gt;=}1,2 selects records in which the
flood-vlans column contains both 1 and 2.
The following operators are available only in Open
vSwitch 2.16 and later:
{in} Selects records in which every element in col
umn[:key] is also in value. (This is the same as
{=}.)
{not-in}
Selects records in which every element in col
umn[:key] is not in value.
For arithmetic operators (= != gt;>gt; = >gt;>gt;=), when key is
specified but a particular record’s column does not con‐
tain key, the record is always omitted from the results.
Thus, the condition other-config:mtu!=1500 matches
records that have a mtu key whose value is not 1500, but
not those that lack an mtu key.
For the set operators, when key is specified but a par‐
ticular record’s column does not contain key, the compar‐
ison is done against an empty set. Thus, the condition
other-config:mtu{!=}1500 matches records that have a mtu
key whose value is not 1500 and those that lack an mtu
key.
Don’t forget to escape gt;>gt; from interpretation by the
shell.
If --columns is specified, only the requested columns are
listed, in the specified order. Otherwise all columns are
listed, in alphabetical order by column name.
The UUIDs shown for rows created in the same ovs-vsctl
invocation will be wrong.
[--if-exists] [--id=@name] get table record [column[:key]]...
Prints the value of each specified column in the given
record in table. For map columns, a key may optionally be
specified, in which case the value associated with key in
the column is printed, instead of the entire map.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does not
exist or key is specified, if key does not exist in
record. With --if-exists, a missing record yields no out‐
put and a missing key prints a blank line.
If @name is specified, then the UUID for record may be
referred to by that name later in the same ovs-vsctl in‐
vocation in contexts where a UUID is expected.
Both --id and the column arguments are optional, but usu‐
ally at least one or the other should be specified. If
both are omitted, then get has no effect except to verify
that record exists in table.
--id and --if-exists cannot be used together.
[--if-exists] set table record column[:key]=value...
Sets the value of each specified column in the given
record in table to value. For map columns, a key may op‐
tionally be specified, in which case the value associated
with key in that column is changed (or added, if none ex‐
ists), instead of the entire map.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does not
exist. With --if-exists, this command does nothing if
record does not exist.
[--if-exists] add table record column [key=]value...
Adds the specified value or key-value pair to column in
record in table. If column is a map, then key is re‐
quired, otherwise it is prohibited. If key already exists
in a map column, then the current value is not replaced
(use the set command to replace an existing value).
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does not
exist. With --if-exists, this command does nothing if
record does not exist.
[--if-exists] remove table record column value...
[--if-exists] remove table record column key...
[--if-exists] remove table record column key=value...
Removes the specified values or key-value pairs from col
umn in record in table. The first form applies to columns
that are not maps: each specified value is removed from
the column. The second and third forms apply to map
columns: if only a key is specified, then any key-value
pair with the given key is removed, regardless of its
value; if a value is given then a pair is removed only if
both key and value match.
It is not an error if the column does not contain the
specified key or value or pair.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does not
exist. With --if-exists, this command does nothing if
record does not exist.
[--if-exists] clear table record column...
Sets each column in record in table to the empty set or
empty map, as appropriate. This command applies only to
columns that are allowed to be empty.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does not
exist. With --if-exists, this command does nothing if
record does not exist.
[--id=(@name|uuid)] create table column[:key]=value...
Creates a new record in table and sets the initial values
of each column. Columns not explicitly set will receive
their default values. Outputs the UUID of the new row.
If @name is specified, then the UUID for the new row may
be referred to by that name elsewhere in the same \*(PN
invocation in contexts where a UUID is expected. Such
references may precede or follow the create command.
If a valid uuid is specified, then it is used as the UUID
of the new row.
Caution (ovs-vsctl as example)
Records in the Open vSwitch database are signifi‐
cant only when they can be reached directly or in‐
directly from the Open_vSwitch table. Except for
records in the QoS or Queue tables, records that
are not reachable from the Open_vSwitch table are
automatically deleted from the database. This
deletion happens immediately, without waiting for
additional ovs-vsctl commands or other database
activity. Thus, a create command must generally be
accompanied by additional commands within the same
ovs-vsctl invocation to add a chain of references
to the newly created record from the top-level
Open_vSwitch record. The EXAMPLES section gives
some examples that show how to do this.
[--if-exists] destroy table record...
Deletes each specified record from table. Unless --if-ex‐‐
ists is specified, each records must exist.
--all destroy table
Deletes all records from the table.
Caution (ovs-vsctl as example)
The destroy command is only useful for records in
the QoS or Queue tables. Records in other tables
are automatically deleted from the database when
they become unreachable from the Open_vSwitch ta‐
ble. This means that deleting the last reference
to a record is sufficient for deleting the record
itself. For records in these tables, destroy is
silently ignored. See the EXAMPLES section below
for more information.
wait-until table record [column[:key]=value]...
Waits until table contains a record named record whose
column equals value or, if key is specified, whose column
contains a key with the specified value. This command
supports the same operators and semantics described for
the find command above.
If no column[:key]=value arguments are given, this com‐
mand waits only until record exists. If more than one
such argument is given, the command waits until all of
them are satisfied.
Caution (ovs-vsctl as example)
Usually wait-until should be placed at the begin‐
ning of a set of ovs-vsctl commands. For example,
wait-until bridge br0 -- get bridge br0 data‐‐
path_id waits until a bridge named br0 is created,
then prints its datapath_id column, whereas get
bridge br0 datapath_id -- wait-until bridge br0
will abort if no bridge named br0 exists when
ovs-vsctl initially connects to the database.
Consider specifying --timeout=0 along with --wait-until,
to prevent ovs-vsctl from terminating after waiting only
at most 5 seconds.
comment [arg]...
This command has no effect on behavior, but any database
log record created by the command will include the com‐
mand and its arguments.
ENVIRONMENT
OVN_NB_DAEMON
If set, this should name the Unix domain socket for an ovn-nbctl
server process. See Daemon Mode, above, for more information.
OVN_NBCTL_OPTIONS
If set, a set of options for ovn-nbctl to apply automatically,
in the same form as on the command line.
OVN_NB_DB
If set, the default database to contact when the --db option is
not used.
EXIT STATUS
0 Successful program execution.
1 Usage, syntax, or network error.
SEE ALSO
ovn-nb(5), ovn-appctl(8).
OVN 24.09.90 ovn-nbctl ovn-nbctl(8)