|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|
|
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMON COMMANDS | OPTIONS | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | COPYRIGHT | COLOPHON |
|
|
|
OVS-APPCTL(8) Open vSwitch OVS-APPCTL(8)
ovs-appctl - utility for configuring running Open vSwitch daemons
ovs-appctl [--target=target | -t target] [--timeout=secs | -T
secs] [--format=format | -f format] [--pretty] command [arg ...]
ovs-appctl --help
ovs-appctl --version
Open vSwitch daemons accept certain commands at runtime to control
their behavior and query their settings. Every daemon accepts a
common set of commands documented under Common Commands below.
Some daemons support additional commands documented in their own
manpages. ovs-vswitchd in particular accepts a number of
additional commands documented in ovs-vswitchd(8).
The ovs-appctl program provides a simple way to invoke these
commands. The command to be sent is specified on ovs-appctl’s
command line as non-option arguments. ovs-appctl sends the
command and prints the daemon’s response on standard output.
In normal use only a single option is accepted:
• -t target or --target=target
Tells ovs-appctl which daemon to contact.
If target begins with / it must name a Unix domain socket on
which an Open vSwitch daemon is listening for control channel
connections. By default, each daemon listens on a Unix domain
socket in the rundir (e.g. /run) named <program>.<pid>.ctl,
where <program> is the program’s name and <pid> is its process
ID. For example, if ovs-vswitchd has PID 123, it would listen
on ovs-vswitchd.123.ctl.
Otherwise, ovs-appctl looks in the rundir for a pidfile, that
is, a file whose contents are the process ID of a running
process as a decimal number, named target.pid. (The --pidfile
option makes an Open vSwitch daemon create a pidfile.)
ovs-appctl reads the pidfile, then looks in the rundir for a
Unix socket named target.<pid>.ctl, where <pid> is replaced by
the process ID read from the pidfile, and uses that file as if
it had been specified directly as the target.
On Windows, target can be an absolute path to a file that
contains a localhost TCP port on which an Open vSwitch daemon is
listening for control channel connections. By default, each
daemon writes the TCP port on which it is listening for control
connection into the file <program>.ctl located inside the
rundir. If target is not an absolute path, ovs-appctl looks in
the rundir for a file named target.ctl. The default target is
ovs-vswitchd.
• -T secs or --timeout=secs
By default, or with a secs of 0, ovs-appctl waits forever to
connect to the daemon and receive a response. This option
limits runtime to approximately secs seconds. If the timeout
expires, ovs-appctl exits with a SIGALRM signal.
• -f format or --format=format
Tells ovs-appctl which output format to use. By default, or
with a format of text, ovs-appctl will print plain-text for
humans. When format is json, ovs-appctl will return a JSON
document. When json is requested, but a command has not
implemented JSON output, the plain-text output will be wrapped
in a provisional JSON document with the following structure:
{"reply-format":"plain","reply":"$PLAIN_TEXT_HERE"}
• --pretty
By default, JSON output is printed as compactly as possible.
This option causes JSON in output to be printed in a more
readable fashion. For example, members of objects and elements
of arrays are printed one per line, with indentation. Requires
--format=json.
Every Open vSwitch daemon supports a common set of commands, which
are documented in this section.
General Commands
These commands display daemon-specific commands and the running
version. Note that these commands are different from the --help
and --version options that return information about the ovs-appctl
utility itself.
• list-commands
Lists the commands supported by the target.
• version
Displays the version and compilation date of the target.
Logging Commands
Open vSwitch has several log levels. The highest-severity log
level is:
• off
No message is ever logged at this level, so setting a logging
destination’s log level to off disables logging to that
destination.
The following log levels, in order of descending severity, are
available:
• emer
A major failure forced a process to abort.
• err
A high-level operation or a subsystem failed. Attention is
warranted.
• warn
A low-level operation failed, but higher-level subsystems may be
able to recover.
• info
Information that may be useful in retrospect when investigating
a problem.
• dbg
Information useful only to someone with intricate knowledge of
the system, or that would commonly cause too-voluminous log
output. Log messages at this level are not logged by default.
Every Open vSwitch daemon supports the following commands for
examining and adjusting log levels:
• vlog/list
Lists the known logging modules and their current levels.
• vlog/list-pattern
Lists logging pattern used for each destination.
• vlog/set [spec]
Sets logging levels. Without any spec, sets the log level for
every module and destination to dbg. Otherwise, spec is a list
of words separated by spaces or commas or colons, up to one from
each category below:
• A valid module name, as displayed by the vlog/list command on
ovs-appctl(8), limits the log level change to the specified
module.
• syslog, console, or file, to limit the log level change to
only to the system log, to the console, or to a file,
respectively.
On Windows platform, syslog is only useful if target was
started with the --syslog-target option (it 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.
Case is not significant within spec.
Regardless of the log levels set for file, logging to a file
will not take place unless the target application was invoked
with the --log-file option.
For compatibility with older versions of OVS, any is accepted
within spec but it has no effect.
• vlog/set PATTERN:destination:pattern
Sets the log pattern for destination to pattern. Each time a
message is logged to destination, pattern determines the
message’s formatting. Most characters in pattern are copied
literally to the log, but special escapes beginning with % are
expanded as follows:
• %A
The name of the application logging the message, e.g.
ovs-vswitchd.
• %B
The RFC5424 syslog PRI of the message.
• %c
The name of the module (as shown by ovs-appctl --list) logging
the message.
• %d
The current date and time in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD
HH:MM:SS).
• %d{format}
The current date and time in the specified format, which takes
the same format as the template argument to strftime(3). As
an extension, any # characters in format will be replaced by
fractional seconds, e.g. use %H:%M:%S.### for the time to the
nearest millisecond. Sub-second times are only approximate
and currently decimal places after the third will always be
reported as zero.
• %D
The current UTC date and time in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD
HH:MM:SS).
• %D{format}
The current UTC date and time in the specified format, which
takes the same format as the template argument to strftime(3).
Supports the same extension for sub-second resolution as
%d{...}.
• %E
The hostname of the node running the application.
• %m
The message being logged.
• %N
A serial number for this message within this run of the
program, as a decimal number. The first message a program
logs has serial number 1, the second one has serial number 2,
and so on.
• %n
A new-line.
• %p
The level at which the message is logged, e.g. DBG.
• %P
The program’s process ID (pid), as a decimal number.
• %r
The number of milliseconds elapsed from the start of the
application to the time the message was logged.
• %t
The subprogram name, that is, an identifying name for the
process or thread that emitted the log message, such as
monitor for the process used for --monitor or main for the
primary process or thread in a program.
• %T
The subprogram name enclosed in parentheses, e.g. (monitor),
or the empty string for the primary process or thread in a
program.
• %%
A literal %.
A few options may appear between the % and the format specifier
character, in this order:
• -
Left justify the escape’s expansion within its field width.
Right justification is the default.
• 0
Pad the field to the field width with 0 characters. Padding
with spaces is the default.
• width
A number specifies the minimum field width. If the escape
expands to fewer characters than width then it is padded to
fill the field width. (A field wider than width is not
truncated to fit.)
The default pattern for console and file output is %D{%Y-%m-%dT
%H:%M:%SZ}|%05N|%c|%p|%m; for syslog output, %05N|%c|%p|%m.
Daemons written in Python (e.g. ovs-monitor-ipsec) do not allow
control over the log pattern.
• vlog/set 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.
• vlog/close
Causes the daemon to close its log file, if it is open. (Use
vlog/reopen to reopen it later.)
• vlog/reopen
Causes the daemon to close its log file, if it is open, and then
reopen it. (This is useful after rotating log files, to cause a
new log file to be used.)
This has no effect if the target application was not invoked
with the --log-file option.
-h, --help
Prints a brief help message to the console.
-V, --version
Prints version information to the console.
ovs-appctl can control all Open vSwitch daemons, including
ovs-vswitchd(8) and ovsdb-server(1).
The Open vSwitch Development Community
2016-2024, The Open vSwitch Development Community
This page is part of the Open vSwitch (a distributed virtual
multilayer switch) project. Information about the project can be
found at ⟨http://openvswitch.org/⟩. If you have a bug report for
this manual page, send it to [email protected]. This page was
obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-07-31.) 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
[email protected]
3.6.90 Aug 09, 2025 OVS-APPCTL(8)
Pages that refer to this page: ovn-detrace(1), ovsdb-client(1), ovsdb-server(1), ovsdb-tool(1), ovs-tcpundump(1), ovn-controller(8), ovn-ic(8), ovn-ic-nbctl(8), ovn-ic-sbctl(8), ovn-nbctl(8), ovn-northd(8), ovn-sbctl(8), ovn-trace(8), ovs-appctl(8), ovs-dpctl(8), ovs-ofctl(8), ovs-tcpdump(8), ovs-testcontroller(8), ovs-vsctl(8), ovs-vswitchd(8), vtep-ctl(8)
|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|