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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ACL LOGGING | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION | OPEN VSWITCH DATABASE USAGE | OVN SOUTHBOUND DATABASE USAGE | RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS | COLOPHON |
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ovn-controller(8) OVN Manual ovn-controller(8)
ovn-controller - Open Virtual Network local controller
ovn-controller [options] [ovs-database]
ovn-controller is the local controller daemon for OVN, the Open
Virtual Network. It connects up to the OVN Southbound database
(see ovn-sb(5)) over the OVSDB protocol, and down to the Open
vSwitch database (see ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5)) over the OVSDB
protocol and to ovs-vswitchd(8) via OpenFlow. Each hypervisor and
software gateway in an OVN deployment runs its own independent
copy of ovn-controller; thus, ovn-controller’s downward
connections are machine-local and do not run over a physical
network.
ACL log messages are logged through ovn-controller’s logging
mechanism. ACL log entries have the module acl_log at log level
info. Configuring logging is described below in the Logging
Options section.
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
pidfile already exists and is locked by a running process,
the daemon 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
(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, the daemon changes
its current working directory to the root directory after
it detaches. 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 additional
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 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,
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
--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
/usr/local/var/log/ovn/program.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 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 message 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
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, 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 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, to discard all messages logged to syslog.
The default is taken from the OVS_SYSLOG_METHOD environment
variable; if it is unset, the default is libc.
PKI Options
PKI configuration is required in order to use SSL/TLS for the
connections to the Northbound and Southbound databases.
-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
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 for
verifying 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 executable 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
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 peer must already have the CA
certificate for the peer to have any confidence in
the program’s identity. However, this offers a way
for a new installation to bootstrap the CA
certificate on its first SSL connection.
Other Options
--unixctl=socket
Sets the name of the control socket on which 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.
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 program 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.
ovn-controller retrieves most of its configuration information
from the local Open vSwitch’s ovsdb-server instance. The default
location is db.sock in the local Open vSwitch’s "run" directory.
It may be overridden by specifying the ovs-database argument as an
OVSDB active or passive connection method, as described in
ovsdb(7).
ovn-controller assumes it gets configuration information from the
following keys in the Open_vSwitch table of the local OVS
instance:
external_ids:system-id
The chassis name to use in the Chassis table.
Changing the system-id while ovn-controller is
running is not directly supported. Users have two
options: either first gracefully stop ovn-controller
or manually delete the stale Chassis and
Chassis_Private records after changing the
system-id. Note that the chassis name can also be
provided via the system-id-override file in the
local OVN "etc" directory or via the -n command-line
option. The following precedence is used: first, the
command-line option is read; if not present, the
system-id-override file is read; if not present,
then the name configured in the database is used.
external_ids:hostname
The hostname to use in the Chassis table.
external_ids:ovn-bridge
The integration bridge to which logical ports are
attached. The default is br-int. If this bridge does
not exist when ovn-controller starts, it will be
created automatically with the default configuration
suggested in ovn-architecture(7). When more than one
controllers are running on the same host,
external_ids:ovn-bridge-CHASSIS_NAME should be set
for each of them, pointing to a unique bridge. This
is required to avoid controllers stepping on each
others’ feet.
external_ids:ovn-bridge-datapath-type
This configuration is optional. If set, then the
datapath type of the integration bridge will be set
to the configured value. If this option is not set,
then ovn-controller will not modify the existing
datapath-type of the integration bridge.
external_ids:ovn-remote
The OVN database that this system should connect to
for its configuration, in one of the same forms
documented above for the ovs-database.
external_ids:ovn-monitor-all
A boolean value that tells if ovn-controller should
monitor all records of tables in the OVN_Southbound.
If this option is set to false, ovn-controller will
conditionally monitor only the records that are
needed for the local chassis.
It is more efficient to set it to true in use cases
where the chassis would anyway need to monitor most
of the records in the OVN_Southbound database, which
would save the overhead of conditions processing,
especially for server side. Typically, set it to
true for environments where all workloads need to be
reachable from each other.
NOTE: for efficiency and scalability in common
scenarios ovn-controller unconditionally monitors
all sub-ports (ports with parent_port set)
regardless of the ovn-monitor-all value.
Default value is false.
external_ids:ovn-remote-probe-interval
The inactivity probe interval of the connection to
the OVN database, in milliseconds. If the value is
zero, it disables the connection keepalive feature.
If the value is nonzero, then it will be forced to a
value of at least 1000 ms.
external_ids:ovn-encap-type
The encapsulation type that a chassis should use to
connect to this node. Multiple encapsulation types
may be specified with a comma-separated list. Each
listed encapsulation type will be paired with
ovn-encap-ip.
Supported tunnel types for connecting hypervisors
and gateways are geneve and vxlan.
Due to the limited amount of metadata in vxlan, the
capabilities and performance of connected gateways
and hypervisors will be reduced versus other tunnel
formats.
external_ids:ovn-encap-ip
The IP address that a chassis should use to connect
to this node using encapsulation types specified by
external_ids:ovn-encap-type. Multiple encapsulation
IPs may be specified with a comma-separated list.
In scenarios where multiple encapsulation IPs are
present, distinct tunnels are established for each
remote chassis. These tunnels are differentiated by
setting unique options:local_ip and
options:remote_ip values in the tunnel interface.
When transmitting a packet to a remote chassis, the
selection of local_ip is guided by the
Interface:external_ids:encap-ip from the local
OVSDB, corresponding to the VIF originating the
packet, if specified. The
Interface:external_ids:encap-ip setting of the VIF
is also populated to the Port_Binding table in the
OVN SB database via the encap column. Consequently,
when a remote chassis needs to send a packet to a
port-binding associated with this VIF, it utilizes
the tunnel with the appropriate options:remote_ip
that matches the ip in Port_Binding:encap. This
mechanism is particularly beneficial for chassis
with multiple physical interfaces designated for
tunneling, where each interface is optimized for
handling specific traffic associated with particular
VIFs.
external_ids:ovn-encap-ip-default
When ovn-encap-ip contains multiple IPs, this field
indicates the default one.
external_ids:ovn-encap-df_default
indicates the DF flag handling of the encapulation.
Set to true to set the DF flag for new data paths or
false to clear the DF flag.
external_ids:ovn-bridge-mappings
A list of key-value pairs that map a physical
network name to a local ovs bridge that provides
connectivity to that network. An example value
mapping two physical network names to two ovs
bridges would be: physnet1:br-eth0,physnet2:br-eth1.
external_ids:ovn-encap-csum
ovn-encap-csum indicates that encapsulation
checksums can be transmitted and received with
reasonable performance. It is a hint to senders
transmitting data to this chassis that they should
use checksums to protect OVN metadata. Set to true
to enable or false to disable. Depending on the
capabilities of the network interface card, enabling
encapsulation checksum may incur performance loss.
In such cases, encapsulation checksums can be
disabled.
external_ids:ovn-encap-tos
ovn-encap-tos indicates the value to be applied to
OVN tunnel interface’s option:tos as specified in
the Open_vSwitch database Interface table. Please
refer to Open VSwitch Manual for details.
external_ids:ovn-cms-options
A list of options that will be consumed by the CMS
Plugin and which specific to this particular
chassis. An example would be:
cms_option1,cms_option2:foo.
external_ids:ovn-transport-zones
The transport zone(s) that this chassis belongs to.
Transport zones is a way to group different chassis
so that tunnels are only formed between members of
the same group(s). Multiple transport zones may be
specified with a comma-separated list. For example:
tz1,tz2,tz3.
If not set, the Chassis will be considered part of a
default transport zone.
external_ids:ovn-chassis-mac-mappings
A list of key-value pairs that map a chassis
specific mac to a physical network name. An example
value mapping two chassis macs to two physical
network names would be:
physnet1:aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff,physnet2:a1:b2:c3:d4:e5:f6.
These are the macs that ovn-controller will replace
a router port mac with, if packet is going from a
distributed router port on vlan type logical switch.
external_ids:ovn-is-interconn
The boolean flag indicates if the chassis is used as
an interconnection gateway.
external_ids:ovn-match-northd-version
The boolean flag indicates if ovn-controller needs
to check ovn-northd version. If this flag is set to
true and the ovn-northd’s version (reported in the
Southbound database) doesn’t match with the
ovn-controller’s internal version, then it will stop
processing the southbound and local Open vSwitch
database changes. The default value is considered
false if this option is not defined.
external_ids:ovn-enable-lflow-cache
The boolean flag indicates if ovn-controller should
enable/disable the logical flow in-memory cache it
uses when processing Southbound database logical
flow changes. By default caching is enabled.
external_ids:ovn-limit-lflow-cache
When used, this configuration value determines the
maximum number of logical flow cache entries
ovn-controller may create when the logical flow
cache is enabled. By default the size of the cache
is unlimited.
external_ids:ovn-memlimit-lflow-cache-kb
When used, this configuration value determines the
maximum size of the logical flow cache (in KB)
ovn-controller may create when the logical flow
cache is enabled. By default the size of the cache
is unlimited.
external_ids:ovn-trim-limit-lflow-cache
When used, this configuration value sets the minimum
number of entries in the logical flow cache starting
with which automatic memory trimming is performed.
By default this is set to 10000 entries.
external_ids:ovn-trim-wmark-perc-lflow-cache
When used, this configuration value sets the
percentage from the high watermark number of entries
in the logical flow cache under which automatic
memory trimming is performed. E.g., if the trim
watermark percentage is set to 50%, automatic memory
trimming happens only when the number of entries in
the logical flow cache gets reduced to less than
half of the last measured high watermark. By default
this is set to 50.
external_ids:ovn-trim-timeout-ms
When used, this configuration value specifies the
time, in milliseconds, since the last logical flow
cache operation after which ovn-controller performs
memory trimming regardless of how many entries there
are in the cache. By default this is set to 30000
(30 seconds).
external_ids:garp-max-timeout-sec
When used, this configuration value specifies the
maximum timeout (in seconds) between two consecutive
GARP packets sent by ovn-controller. ovn-controller
by default sends just 4 GARP packets with an
exponential backoff timeout. Setting
external_ids:garp-max-timeout-sec allows to cap for
the exponential backoff used by ovn-controller to
send GARPs packets.
external_ids:arp-nd-max-timeout-sec
When used, this configuration value specifies the
maximum timeout (in seconds) between two consecutive
ARP/ND packets sent by ovn-controller to resolve
ECMP nexthop mac address. ovn-controller by default
continuously sends ARP/ND packets. Setting
external_ids:arp-nd-max-timeout-sec allows to cap
for the exponential backoff used by ovn-controller
to send ARPs/NDs packets.
external_ids:ovn-bridge-remote
Connection to the OVN management bridge in OvS. It
defaults to unix:br-int.mgmt when not specified.
external_ids:ovn-bridge-remote-probe-interval
The inactivity probe interval of the connection to
the OVN management bridge, in milliseconds. It
defaults to zero. If the value is zero, it disables
the inactivity probe.
external_ids:dynamic-routing-port-mapping
This setting works together with the Northbound
dynamic-routing-port-name option on
Logical_Router_Ports. See the ovn-nb(5) for more
details.
external_ids:ovn-cleanup-on-exit
The boolean flag indicates if ovn-controller should
perform cleanup on exit. In order to keep backward
compatibility the --restart exit flag has priority
over this flag.
Most of configuration options listed above can also be set for a
particular chassis name (see external_ids:system-id for more
information). This can be achieved by setting
external_ids:option-[chassis] instead of external_ids:option. For
example, set external_ids:ovn-encap-ip-otherhv to use a particular
IP address for the controller instance named otherhv. Name
specific configuration options always override any global options
set in the database.
Chassis-specific configuration options in the database plus the
ability to configure the chassis name to use via the
system-id-override file or command line allows to run multiple
ovn-controller instances with unique chassis names on the same
host using the same vswitchd instance. This may be useful when
running a hybrid setup with more than one CMS managing ports on
the host, or to use different datapath types on the same host.
Also note that this ability is highly experimental and has known
limitations (for example, stateful ACLs are not supported). Use at
your own risk.
ovn-controller reads the following values from the Open_vSwitch
database of the local OVS instance:
datapath-type from Bridge table
This value is read from local OVS integration bridge
row of Bridge table and populated in
other_config:datapath-type of the Chassis table in
the OVN_Southbound database.
iface-types from Open_vSwitch table
This value is populated in external_ids:iface-types
of the Chassis table in the OVN_Southbound database.
private_key, certificate, ca_cert, and bootstrap_ca_cert
from SSL table
These values provide the SSL/TLS configuration used
for connecting to the OVN southbound database server
when an SSL/TLS connection type is configured via
external_ids:ovn-remote. Note that this SSL/TLS
configuration can also be provided via command-line
options, the configuration in the database takes
precedence if both are present.
ovn-controller uses a number of external_ids keys in the Open
vSwitch database to keep track of ports and interfaces. For proper
operation, users should not change or clear these keys:
external_ids:ovn-chassis-id in the Port table
The presence of this key identifies a tunnel port
within the integration bridge as one created by
ovn-controller to reach a remote chassis. Its value
is the chassis ID of the remote chassis.
external_ids:ct-zone-range in the Open_vSwitch table
The presence of this key identifies a minimum and
maximum values for ct-zone ids dynamically selected
by ovn-controller (boundaries are included in the
range). Minimum value is 1 while maximum value is
65535.
external_ids:ct-zone-* in the Bridge table
Logical ports and gateway routers are assigned a
connection tracking zone by ovn-controller for
stateful services. To keep state across restarts of
ovn-controller, these keys are stored in the
integration bridge’s Bridge table. The name contains
a prefix of ct-zone- followed by the name of the
logical port or gateway router’s zone key. The value
for this key identifies the zone used for this port.
external_ids:ovn-localnet-port in the Port table
The presence of this key identifies a patch port as
one created by ovn-controller to connect the
integration bridge and another bridge to implement a
localnet logical port. Its value is the name of the
logical port with type set to localnet that the port
implements. See external_ids:ovn-bridge-mappings,
above, for more information.
Each localnet logical port is implemented as a pair
of patch ports, one in the integration bridge, one
in a different bridge, with the same
external_ids:ovn-localnet-port value.
external_ids:ovn-l2gateway-port in the Port table
The presence of this key identifies a patch port as
one created by ovn-controller to connect the
integration bridge and another bridge to implement a
l2gateway logical port. Its value is the name of the
logical port with type set to l2gateway that the
port implements. See
external_ids:ovn-bridge-mappings, above, for more
information.
Each l2gateway logical port is implemented as a pair
of patch ports, one in the integration bridge, one
in a different bridge, with the same
external_ids:ovn-l2gateway-port value.
external-ids:ovn-l3gateway-port in the Port table
This key identifies a patch port as one created by
ovn-controller to implement a l3gateway logical
port. Its value is the name of the logical port with
type set to l3gateway. This patch port is similar to
the OVN logical patch port, except that l3gateway
port can only be bound to a particular chassis.
external-ids:ovn-logical-patch-port in the Port table
This key identifies a patch port as one created by
ovn-controller to implement an OVN logical patch
port within the integration bridge. Its value is the
name of the OVN logical patch port that it
implements.
external-ids:ovn-startup-ts in the Bridge table
This key represents the timestamp (in milliseconds)
at which ovn-controller process was started.
external-ids:ovn-nb-cfg in the Bridge table
This key represents the last known
OVN_Southbound.SB_Global.nb_cfg value for which all
flows have been successfully installed in OVS.
external-ids:ovn-nb-cfg-ts in the Bridge table
This key represents the timestamp (in milliseconds)
of the last known OVN_Southbound.SB_Global.nb_cfg
value for which all flows have been successfully
installed in OVS.
external_ids:ovn-installed and
external_ids:ovn-installed-ts in the Interface table
This key is set after all openflow operations
corresponding to the OVS interface have been
processed by ovs-vswitchd. At the same time a
timestamp, in milliseconds since the epoch, is
stored in external_ids:ovn-installed-ts.
ovn-controller reads from much of the OVN_Southbound database to
guide its operation. ovn-controller also writes to the following
tables:
Chassis
Upon startup, ovn-controller creates a row in this
table to represent its own chassis. Upon graceful
termination, e.g. with ovn-appctl -t ovn-controller
exit (but not SIGTERM), ovn-controller removes its
row.
Encap Upon startup, ovn-controller creates a row or rows
in this table that represent the tunnel
encapsulations by which its chassis can be reached,
and points its Chassis row to them. Upon graceful
termination, ovn-controller removes these rows.
Port_Binding
At runtime, ovn-controller sets the chassis columns
of ports that are resident on its chassis to point
to its Chassis row, and, conversely, clears the
chassis column of ports that point to its Chassis
row but are no longer resident on its chassis. The
chassis column has a weak reference type, so when
ovn-controller gracefully exits and removes its
Chassis row, the database server automatically
clears any remaining references to that row.
MAC_Binding
At runtime, ovn-controller updates the MAC_Binding
table as instructed by put_arp and put_nd logical
actions. These changes persist beyond the lifetime
of ovn-controller.
ovn-appctl can send commands to a running ovn-controller process.
The currently supported commands are described below.
exit Causes ovn-controller to gracefully terminate.
ct-zone-list
Lists each local logical port and its connection
tracking zone.
meter-table-list
Lists each meter table entry and its local meter id.
group-table-list
Lists each group table entry and its local group id.
inject-pkt microflow
Injects microflow into the connected Open vSwitch
instance. microflow must contain an ingress logical
port (inport argument) that is present on the Open
vSwitch instance.
The microflow argument describes the packet whose
forwarding is to be simulated, in the syntax of an
OVN logical expression, as described in ovn-sb(5),
to express constraints. The parser understands
prerequisites; for example, if the expression refers
to ip4.src, there is no need to explicitly state ip4
or eth.type == 0x800.
connection-status
Show OVN SBDB connection status for the chassis.
recompute
Trigger a full compute iteration in ovn-controller
based on the contents of the Southbound database and
local OVS database.
This command is intended to use only in the event of
a bug in the incremental processing engine in
ovn-controller to avoid inconsistent states. It
should therefore be used with care as full
recomputes are cpu intensive.
sb-cluster-state-reset
Reset southbound database cluster status when
databases are destroyed and rebuilt.
If all databases in a clustered southbound database
are removed from disk, then the stored index of all
databases will be reset to zero. This will cause
ovn-controller to be unable to read or write to the
southbound database, because it will always detect
the data as stale. In such a case, run this command
so that ovn-controller will reset its local index so
that it can interact with the southbound database
again.
debug/delay-nb-cfg-report seconds
This command is used to delay ovn-controller
updating the nb_cfg back to OVN_Southbound database.
This is useful when ovn-nbctl --wait=hv is used to
measure end-to-end latency in a large scale
environment. See ovn-nbctl(8) for more details.
lflow-cache/flush
Flushes the ovn-controller logical flow cache.
lflow-cache/show-stats
Displays logical flow cache statistics:
enabled/disabled, per cache type entry counts.
inc-engine/show-stats
Display ovn-controller engine counters. For each
engine node the following counters have been added:
• recompute
• compute
• cancel
inc-engine/show-stats engine_node_name counter_name
Display the ovn-controller engine counter(s) for the
specified engine_node_name. counter_name is optional
and can be one of recompute, compute or cancel.
inc-engine/clear-stats
Reset ovn-controller engine counters.
This page is part of the Open Virtual Network (Daemons for Open
vSwitch that translate virtual network configurations into
OpenFlow) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://www.ovn.org/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, send it to bugs@openvswitch.org. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/ovn-org/ovn⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-08.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
OVN 25.03.90 ovn-controller ovn-controller(8)
Pages that refer to this page: ovn-nb(5), ovn-sb(5), ovn-architecture(7)
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