OpenFlow Switch Management Commands

Most of these commands take an argument that specifies the method for connecting to an OpenFlow switch. The following connection methods are supported:

show switch

Prints to the console information on switch, including information on its flow tables and ports.

dump-tables switch

Prints to the console statistics for each of the flow tables used by switch.

dump-table-features switch

Prints to the console features for each of the flow tables used by switch.

dump-table-desc switch

Prints to the console configuration for each of the flow tables used by switch for OpenFlow 1.4+.

mod-table switch table setting

This command configures flow table settings in switch for OpenFlow table table, which may be expressed as a number or (unless --no-names is specified) a name.

The available settings depend on the OpenFlow version in use. In OpenFlow 1.1 and 1.2 (which must be enabled with the -O option) only, mod-table configures behavior when no flow is found when a packet is looked up in a flow table. The following setting values are available:

In OpenFlow 1.3 and later (which must be enabled with the -O option) and Open vSwitch 2.11 and later only, mod-table can change the name of a table:

In OpenFlow 1.4 and later (which must be enabled with the -O option) only, mod-table configures the behavior when a controller attempts to add a flow to a flow table that is full. The following setting values are available:

dump-ports switch [netdev]

Prints to the console statistics for network devices associated with switch. If netdev is specified, only the statistics associated with that device will be printed. netdev can be an OpenFlow assigned port number or device name, e.g. eth0.

dump-ports-desc switch [port]

Prints to the console detailed information about network devices associated with switch. To dump only a specific port, specify its number as port. Otherwise, if port is omitted, or if it is specified as ANY, then all ports are printed. This is a subset of the information provided by the show command.

If the connection to switch negotiates OpenFlow 1.0, 1.2, or 1.2, this command uses an OpenFlow extension only implemented in Open vSwitch (version 1.7 and later).

Only OpenFlow 1.5 and later support dumping a specific port. Earlier versions of OpenFlow always dump all ports.

mod-port switch port action

Modify characteristics of port port in switch. port may be an OpenFlow port number or name (unless --no-names is specified) or the keyword LOCAL (the preferred way to refer to the OpenFlow local port). The action may be any one of the following:

The show command displays (among other information) the configuration that mod-port changes.

get-frags switch

Prints switch's fragment handling mode. See set-frags, below, for a description of each fragment handling mode.

The show command also prints the fragment handling mode among its other output.

set-frags switch frag_mode

Configures switch's treatment of IPv4 and IPv6 fragments. The choices for frag_mode are:

See the description of ip_frag, in ovs-fields(7), for a way to match on whether a packet is a fragment and on its fragment offset.

dump-flows switch [flows]

Prints to the console all flow entries in switch's tables that match flows. If flows is omitted, all flows in the switch are retrieved. See Flow Syntax, below, for the syntax of flows. The output format is described in Table Entry Output.

By default, ovs-ofctl prints flow entries in the same order that the switch sends them, which is unlikely to be intuitive or consistent. Use --sort and --rsort to control display order. The --names/--no-names and --stats/--no-stats options also affect output formatting. See the descriptions of these options, under OPTIONS below, for more information

dump-aggregate switch [flows]

Prints to the console aggregate statistics for flows in switch's tables that match flows. If flows is omitted, the statistics are aggregated across all flows in the switch's flow tables. See Flow Syntax, below, for the syntax of flows. The output format is described in Table Entry Output.

queue-stats switch [port [queue]]

Prints to the console statistics for the specified queue on port within switch. port can be an OpenFlow port number or name, the keyword LOCAL (the preferred way to refer to the OpenFlow local port), or the keyword ALL. Either of port or queue or both may be omitted (or equivalently the keyword ALL). If both are omitted, statistics are printed for all queues on all ports. If only queue is omitted, then statistics are printed for all queues on port; if only port is omitted, then statistics are printed for queue on every port where it exists.

queue-get-config switch [port [queue]]

Prints to the console the configuration of queue on port in switch. If port is omitted or ANY, reports queues for all port. If queue is omitted or ANY, reports all queues. For OpenFlow 1.3 and earlier, the output always includes all queues, ignoring queue if specified.

This command has limited usefulness, because ports often have no configured queues and because the OpenFlow protocol provides only very limited information about the configuration of a queue.

dump-ipfix-bridge switch

Prints to the console the statistics of bridge IPFIX for switch. If bridge IPFIX is configured on the switch, IPFIX statistics can be retrieved. Otherwise, error message will be printed.

This command uses an Open vSwitch extension that is only in Open vSwitch 2.6 and later.

dump-ipfix-flow switch

Prints to the console the statistics of flow-based IPFIX for switch. If flow-based IPFIX is configured on the switch, statistics of all the collector set ids on the switch will be printed. Otherwise, print error message.

Refer to ovs-vswitchd.conf.db(5) for more details on configuring flow based IPFIX and collector set ids.

This command uses an Open vSwitch extension that is only in Open vSwitch 2.6 and later.

ct-flush-zone switch zone

Flushes the connection tracking entries in zone on switch.

This command uses an Open vSwitch extension that is only in Open vSwitch 2.6 and later.

OpenFlow Switch Flow Table Commands

[--bundle] add-flow switch flow

[--bundle] add-flow switch - < file

[--bundle] add-flows switch file

Add each flow entry to switch's tables. Each flow specification (e.g., each line in file) may start with add, modify, delete, modify_strict, or delete_strict keyword to specify whether a flow is to be added, modified, or deleted, and whether the modify or delete is strict or not. For backwards compatibility a flow specification without one of these keywords is treated as a flow add. All flow mods are executed in the order specified.

[--bundle] [--strict] mod-flows switch flow

[--bundle] [--strict] mod-flows switch - < file

Modify the actions in entries from switch's tables that match the specified flows. With --strict, wildcards are not treated as active for matching purposes.

[--bundle] del-flows switch

[--bundle] [--strict] del-flows switch [flow]

[--bundle] [--strict] del-flows switch - < file

Deletes entries from switch's flow table. With only a switch argument, deletes all flows. Otherwise, deletes flow entries that match the specified flows. With --strict, wildcards are not treated as active for matching purposes.

[--bundle] [--readd] replace-flows switch file

Reads flow entries from file (or stdin if file is -) and queries the flow table from switch. Then it fixes up any differences, adding flows from flow that are missing on switch, deleting flows from switch that are not in file, and updating flows in switch whose actions, cookie, or timeouts differ in file.

With --readd, ovs-ofctl adds all the flows from file, even those that exist with the same actions, cookie, and timeout in switch. In OpenFlow 1.0 and 1.1, re-adding a flow always resets the flow's packet and byte counters to 0, and in OpenFlow 1.2 and later, it does so only if the reset_counts flag is set.

diff-flows source1 source2

Reads flow entries from source1 and source2 and prints the differences. A flow that is in source1 but not in source2 is printed preceded by a -, and a flow that is in source2 but not in source1 is printed preceded by a +. If a flow exists in both source1 and source2 with different actions, cookie, or timeouts, then both versions are printed preceded by - and +, respectively.

source1 and source2 may each name a file or a switch. If a name begins with / or ., then it is considered to be a file name. A name that contains : is considered to be a switch. Otherwise, it is a file if a file by that name exists, a switch if not.

For this command, an exit status of 0 means that no differences were found, 1 means that an error occurred, and 2 means that some differences were found.

packet-out switch packet-out

Connects to switch and instructs it to execute the packet-out OpenFlow message, specified as defined in Packet-Out Syntax section.

Group Table Commands

The group commands work only with switches that support OpenFlow 1.1 or later or the Open vSwitch group extensions to OpenFlow 1.0 (added in Open vSwitch 2.9.90). For OpenFlow 1.1 or later, it is necessary to explicitly enable these protocol versions in ovs-ofctl (using -O). For more information, see ``Q: What versions of OpenFlow does Open vSwitch support?'' in the Open vSwitch FAQ.

[--bundle] add-group switch group

[--bundle] add-group switch - < file

[--bundle] add-groups switch file

Add each group entry to switch's tables. Each group specification (e.g., each line in file) may start with add, modify, add_or_mod, delete, insert_bucket, or remove_bucket keyword to specify whether a flow is to be added, modified, or deleted, or whether a group bucket is to be added or removed. For backwards compatibility a group specification without one of these keywords is treated as a group add. All group mods are executed in the order specified.

[--bundle] [--may-create] mod-group switch group

[--bundle] [--may-create] mod-group switch - < file

Modify the action buckets in entries from switch's tables for each group entry. If a specified group does not already exist, then without --may-create, this command has no effect; with --may-create, it creates a new group. The --may-create option uses an Open vSwitch extension to OpenFlow only implemented in Open vSwitch 2.6 and later.

[--bundle] del-groups switch

[--bundle] del-groups switch [group]

[--bundle] del-groups switch - < file

Deletes entries from switch's group table. With only a switch argument, deletes all groups. Otherwise, deletes the group for each group entry.

[--bundle] insert-buckets switch group

[--bundle] insert-buckets switch - < file

Add buckets to an existing group present in the switch's group table. If no command_bucket_id is present in the group specification then all buckets of the group are removed.

[--bundle] remove-buckets switch group

[--bundle] remove-buckets switch - < file

Remove buckets to an existing group present in the switch's group table. If no command_bucket_id is present in the group specification then all buckets of the group are removed.

dump-groups switch [group]

Prints group entries in switch's tables to console. To dump only a specific group, specify its number as group. Otherwise, if group is omitted, or if it is specified as ALL, then all groups are printed.

Only OpenFlow 1.5 and later support dumping a specific group. Earlier versions of OpenFlow always dump all groups.

dump-group-features switch

Prints to the console the group features of the switch.

dump-group-stats switch [group]

Prints to the console statistics for the specified group in switch's tables. If group is omitted then statistics for all groups are printed.

OpenFlow 1.3+ Switch Meter Table Commands

OpenFlow 1.3 introduced support for meters, so these commands only work with switches that support OpenFlow 1.3 or later. It is necessary to explicitly enable these protocol versions in ovs-ofctl (using -O) and in the switch itself (with the protocols column in the Bridge table). For more information, see ``Q: What versions of OpenFlow does Open vSwitch support?'' in the Open vSwitch FAQ.

add-meter switch meter

Add a meter entry to switch's tables. The meter syntax is described in section Meter Syntax, below.

mod-meter switch meter

Modify an existing meter.

del-meters switch [meter]

Delete entries from switch's meter table. To delete only a specific meter, specify its number as meter. Otherwise, if meter is omitted, or if it is specified as all, then all meters are deleted.

dump-meters switch [meter]

Print entries from switch's meter table. To print only a specific meter, specify its number as meter. Otherwise, if meter is omitted, or if it is specified as all, then all meters are printed.

meter-stats switch [meter]

Print meter statistics. meter can specify a single meter with syntax meter=id, or all meters with syntax meter=all.

meter-features switch

Print meter features.

OpenFlow Switch Bundle Command

bundle switch file

Execute all flow and group mods in file as a single atomic transaction against switch's tables. All bundled mods are executed in the order specified.

OpenFlow Switch Tunnel TLV Table Commands

A TLV mapping is specified with the syntax {class=class ,type=type,len=length}->tun_metadatan. When an option mapping exists for a given tun_metadatan, matching on the defined field becomes possible, e.g.:

A mapping should not be changed while it is in active use by a flow. The result of doing so is undefined.

These commands are Nicira extensions to OpenFlow and require Open vSwitch 2.5 or later.

add-tlv-map switch option[,option]...

Add each option to switch's tables. Duplicate fields are rejected.

del-tlv-map switch [option[,option]]...

Delete each option from switch's table, or all option TLV mapping if no option is specified. Fields that aren't mapped are ignored.

dump-tlv-map switch

Show the currently mapped fields in the switch's option table as well as switch capabilities.

OpenFlow Switch Monitoring Commands

snoop switch

Connects to switch and prints to the console all OpenFlow messages received. Unlike other ovs-ofctl commands, if switch is the name of a bridge, then the snoop command connects to a Unix domain socket named /var/run/openvswitch/switch.snoop. ovs-vswitchd listens on such a socket for each bridge and sends to it all of the OpenFlow messages sent to or received from its configured OpenFlow controller. Thus, this command can be used to view OpenFlow protocol activity between a switch and its controller.

When a switch has more than one controller configured, only the traffic to and from a single controller is output. If none of the controllers is configured as a primary or a secondary (using a Nicira extension to OpenFlow 1.0 or 1.1, or a standard request in OpenFlow 1.2 or later), then a controller is chosen arbitrarily among them. If there is a primary controller, it is chosen; otherwise, if there are any controllers that are not primaries or secondaries, one is chosen arbitrarily; otherwise, a secondary controller is chosen arbitrarily. This choice is made once at connection time and does not change as controllers reconfigure their roles.

If a switch has no controller configured, or if the configured controller is disconnected, no traffic is sent, so monitoring will not show any traffic.

monitor switch [miss-len] [invalid_ttl] [watch:[spec...]]

Connects to switch and prints to the console all OpenFlow messages received. Usually, switch should specify the name of a bridge in the ovs-vswitchd database. This is available only in OpenFlow 1.0 as Nicira extension.

If miss-len is provided, ovs-ofctl sends an OpenFlow ``set configuration'' message at connection setup time that requests miss-len bytes of each packet that misses the flow table. Open vSwitch does not send these and other asynchronous messages to an ovs-ofctl monitor client connection unless a nonzero value is specified on this argument. (Thus, if miss-len is not specified, very little traffic will ordinarily be printed.)

If invalid_ttl is passed, ovs-ofctl sends an OpenFlow ``set configuration'' message at connection setup time that requests INVALID_TTL_TO_CONTROLLER, so that ovs-ofctl monitor can receive ``packet-in'' messages when TTL reaches zero on dec_ttl action. Only OpenFlow 1.1 and 1.2 support invalid_ttl; Open vSwitch also implements it for OpenFlow 1.0 as an extension.

watch:[spec...] causes ovs-ofctl to send a ``monitor request'' Nicira extension message to the switch at connection setup time. This message causes the switch to send information about flow table changes as they occur. The following comma-separated spec syntax is available:

This command may be useful for debugging switch or controller implementations. With watch:, it is particularly useful for observing how a controller updates flow tables.

OpenFlow Switch and Controller Commands

probe target

Sends a single OpenFlow echo-request message to target and waits for the response. With the -t or --timeout option, this command can test whether an OpenFlow switch or controller is up and running.

ping target [n]

Sends a series of 10 echo request packets to target and times each reply. The echo request packets consist of an OpenFlow header plus n bytes (default: 64) of randomly generated payload. This measures the latency of individual requests.

benchmark target n count

Sends count echo request packets that each consist of an OpenFlow header plus n bytes of payload and waits for each response. Reports the total time required. This is a measure of the maximum bandwidth to target for round-trips of n-byte messages.

Other Commands

ofp-parse file

Reads file (or stdin if file is -) as a series of OpenFlow messages in the binary format used on an OpenFlow connection, and prints them to the console. This can be useful for printing OpenFlow messages captured from a TCP stream.

ofp-parse-pcap file [port...]

Reads file, which must be in the PCAP format used by network capture tools such as tcpdump or wireshark, extracts all the TCP streams for OpenFlow connections, and prints the OpenFlow messages in those connections in human-readable format on stdout.

OpenFlow connections are distinguished by TCP port number. Non-OpenFlow packets are ignored. By default, data on TCP ports 6633 and 6653 are considered to be OpenFlow. Specify one or more port arguments to override the default.

This command cannot usefully print SSL encrypted traffic. It does not understand IPv6.

Flow Syntax

Flow descriptions should be in normal form. This means that a flow may only specify a value for an L3 field if it also specifies a particular L2 protocol, and that a flow may only specify an L4 field if it also specifies particular L2 and L3 protocol types. For example, if the L2 protocol type dl_type is wildcarded, then L3 fields nw_src, nw_dst, and nw_proto must also be wildcarded. Similarly, if dl_type or nw_proto (the L3 protocol type) is wildcarded, so must be the L4 fields tcp_dst and tcp_src. ovs-ofctl will warn about flows not in normal form.

ovs-fields(7) describes the supported fields and how to match them. In addition to match fields, commands that operate on flows accept a few additional key-value pairs:

table=table

For flow dump commands, limits the flows dumped to those in table, which may be expressed as a number between 0 and 255 or (unless --no-names is specified) a name. If not specified (or if 255 is specified as table), then flows in all tables are dumped.

For flow table modification commands, behavior varies based on the OpenFlow version used to connect to the switch:

duration=...

n_packet=...

n_bytes=...

ovs-ofctl ignores assignments to these ``fields'' to allow output from the dump-flows command to be used as input for other commands that parse flows.

The add-flow, add-flows, and mod-flows commands require an additional field, which must be the final field specified:

actions=[action][,action...]

Specifies a comma-separated list of actions to take on a packet when the flow entry matches. If no action is specified, then packets matching the flow are dropped. See ovs-actions(7) for details on the syntax and semantics of actions. K

An opaque identifier called a cookie can be used as a handle to identify a set of flows:

cookie=value

A cookie can be associated with a flow using the add-flow, add-flows, and mod-flows commands. value can be any 64-bit number and need not be unique among flows. If this field is omitted, a default cookie value of 0 is used.

cookie=value/mask

When using NXM, the cookie can be used as a handle for querying, modifying, and deleting flows. value and mask may be supplied for the del-flows, mod-flows, dump-flows, and dump-aggregate commands to limit matching cookies. A 1-bit in mask indicates that the corresponding bit in cookie must match exactly, and a 0-bit wildcards that bit. A mask of -1 may be used to exactly match a cookie.

The mod-flows command can update the cookies of flows that match a cookie by specifying the cookie field twice (once with a mask for matching and once without to indicate the new value):

The ability to match on cookies was added in Open vSwitch 1.5.0.

The following additional field sets the priority for flows added by the add-flow and add-flows commands. For mod-flows and del-flows when --strict is specified, priority must match along with the rest of the flow specification. For mod-flows without --strict, priority is only significant if the command creates a new flow, that is, non-strict mod-flows does not match on priority and will not change the priority of existing flows. Other commands do not allow priority to be specified.

priority=value

The priority at which a wildcarded entry will match in comparison to others. value is a number between 0 and 65535, inclusive. A higher value will match before a lower one. An exact-match entry will always have priority over an entry containing wildcards, so it has an implicit priority value of 65535. When adding a flow, if the field is not specified, the flow's priority will default to 32768.

OpenFlow leaves behavior undefined when two or more flows with the same priority can match a single packet. Some users expect ``sensible'' behavior, such as more specific flows taking precedence over less specific flows, but OpenFlow does not specify this and Open vSwitch does not implement it. Users should therefore take care to use priorities to ensure the behavior that they expect.

The add-flow, add-flows, and mod-flows commands support the following additional options. These options affect only new flows. Thus, for add-flow and add-flows, these options are always significant, but for mod-flows they are significant only if the command creates a new flow, that is, their values do not update or affect existing flows.

idle_timeout=seconds

Causes the flow to expire after the given number of seconds of inactivity. A value of 0 (the default) prevents a flow from expiring due to inactivity.

hard_timeout=seconds

Causes the flow to expire after the given number of seconds, regardless of activity. A value of 0 (the default) gives the flow no hard expiration deadline.

importance=value

Sets the importance of a flow. The flow entry eviction mechanism can use importance as a factor in deciding which flow to evict. A value of 0 (the default) makes the flow non-evictable on the basis of importance. Specify a value between 0 and 65535.

Only OpenFlow 1.4 and later support importance.

send_flow_rem

Marks the flow with a flag that causes the switch to generate a ``flow removed'' message and send it to interested controllers when the flow later expires or is removed.

check_overlap

Forces the switch to check that the flow match does not overlap that of any different flow with the same priority in the same table. (This check is expensive so it is best to avoid it.)

reset_counts

When this flag is specified on a flow being added to a switch, and the switch already has a flow with an identical match, an OpenFlow 1.2 (or later) switch resets the flow's packet and byte counters to 0. Without the flag, the packet and byte counters are preserved.

OpenFlow 1.0 and 1.1 switches always reset counters in this situation, as if reset_counts were always specified.

Open vSwitch 1.10 added support for reset_counts.

no_packet_counts

no_byte_counts

Adding these flags to a flow advises an OpenFlow 1.3 (or later) switch that the controller does not need packet or byte counters, respectively, for the flow. Some switch implementations might achieve higher performance or reduce resource consumption when these flags are used. These flags provide no benefit to the Open vSwitch software switch implementation.

OpenFlow 1.2 and earlier do not support these flags.

Open vSwitch 1.10 added support for no_packet_counts and no_byte_counts.

The dump-flows, dump-aggregate, del-flow and del-flows commands support these additional optional fields:

out_port=port

If set, a matching flow must include an output action to port, which must be an OpenFlow port number or name (e.g. local).

out_group=group

If set, a matching flow must include an group action naming group, which must be an OpenFlow group number. This field is supported in Open vSwitch 2.5 and later and requires OpenFlow 1.1 or later.

Table Entry Output

duration=secs

The time, in seconds, that the entry has been in the table. secs includes as much precision as the switch provides, possibly to nanosecond resolution.

n_packets

The number of packets that have matched the entry.

n_bytes

The total number of bytes from packets that have matched the entry.

The following additional fields are included only if the switch is Open vSwitch 1.6 or later and the NXM flow format is used to dump the flow (see the description of the --flow-format option below). The values of these additional fields are approximations only and in particular idle_age will sometimes become nonzero even for busy flows.

hard_age=secs

The integer number of seconds since the flow was added or modified. hard_age is displayed only if it differs from the integer part of duration. (This is separate from duration because mod-flows restarts the hard_timeout timer without zeroing duration.)

idle_age=secs

The integer number of seconds that have passed without any packets passing through the flow.

Packet-Out Syntax

in_port=port

The port number to be considered the in_port when processing actions. This can be any valid OpenFlow port number, or any of the LOCAL, CONTROLLER, or NONE. This field is required.

pipeline_field=value

Optionally, user can specify a list of pipeline fields for a packet-out message. The supported pipeline fields includes tunnel fields and register fields as defined in ovs-fields(7).

packet=hex-string

The actual packet to send, expressed as a string of hexadecimal bytes. This field is required.

actions=[action][,action...]

The syntax of actions are identical to the actions= field described in Flow Syntax above. Specifying actions= is optional, but omitting actions is interpreted as a drop, so the packet will not be sent anywhere from the switch. actions must be specified at the end of each line, like for flow mods.

Group Syntax

group_id=id

The integer group id of group. When this field is specified in del-groups or dump-groups, the keyword "all" may be used to designate all groups. This field is required.

type=type

The type of the group. The add-group, add-groups and mod-groups commands require this field. It is prohibited for other commands. The following keywords designated the allowed types:

command_bucket_id=id

The bucket to operate on. The insert-buckets and remove-buckets commands require this field. It is prohibited for other commands. id may be an integer or one of the following keywords:

If id is an integer then it should correspond to the bucket_id of a bucket present in the group. In case of the insert-buckets command the effect is to insert buckets just before the bucket in the group whose bucket_id is id. In case of the iremove-buckets command the effect is to remove the in the group whose bucket_id is id. It is an error if there is no bucket persent group in whose bucket_id is id.

selection_method=method

The selection method used to select a bucket for a select group. This is a string of 1 to 15 bytes in length known to lower layers. This field is optional for add-group, add-groups and mod-group commands on groups of type select. Prohibited otherwise. If no selection method is specified, Open vSwitch up to release 2.9 applies the hash method with default fields. From 2.10 onwards Open vSwitch defaults to the dp_hash method with symmetric L3/L4 hash algorithm, as long as the weighted group buckets can be mapped to dp_hash values with sufficient accuracy. In 2.10 this was restricted to a maximum of 64 buckets, and in 2.17 the limit was raised to 256 buckets. In those rare cases Open vSwitch 2.10 and later fall back to the hash method with the default set of hash fields.

This option uses a Netronome OpenFlow extension which is only supported when using Open vSwitch 2.4 and later with OpenFlow 1.5 and later.

selection_method_param=param

64-bit integer parameter to the selection method selected by the selection_method field. The parameter's use is defined by the lower-layer that implements the selection_method. It is optional if the selection_method field is specified as a non-empty string. Prohibited otherwise. The default value is zero.

This option uses a Netronome OpenFlow extension which is only supported when using Open vSwitch 2.4 and later with OpenFlow 1.5 and later.

fields=field

fields(field[=mask]...)

The field parameters to selection method selected by the selection_method field. The syntax is described in Flow Syntax with the additional restrictions that if a value is provided it is treated as a wildcard mask and wildcard masks following a slash are prohibited. The pre-requisites of fields must be provided by any flows that output to the group. The use of the fields is defined by the lower-layer that implements the selection_method. They are optional if the selection_method field is specified as ``hash', prohibited otherwise. The default is no fields.

This option will use a Netronome OpenFlow extension which is only supported when using Open vSwitch 2.4 and later with OpenFlow 1.5 and later.

bucket=bucket_parameters

The add-group, add-groups and mod-group commands require at least one bucket field. Bucket fields must appear after all other fields. Multiple bucket fields to specify multiple buckets. The order in which buckets are specified corresponds to their order in the group. If the type of the group is "indirect" then only one group may be specified. bucket_parameters consists of a list of field=value assignments, separated by commas or white space followed by a comma-separated list of actions. The fields for bucket_parameters are:

Meter Syntax

meter=id

The identifier for the meter. An integer is used to specify a user-defined meter. In addition, the keywords "all", "controller", and "slowpath", are also supported as virtual meters. The "controller" and "slowpath" virtual meters apply to packets sent to the controller and to the OVS userspace, respectively.

When this field is specified in del-meter, dump-meter, or meter-stats, the keyword "all" may be used to designate all meters. This field is required, except for meter-stats, which dumps all stats when this field is not specified.

kbps

pktps

The unit for the rate and burst_size band parameters. kbps specifies kilobits per second, and pktps specifies packets per second. A unit is required for the add-meter and mod-meter commands.

burst

If set, enables burst support for meter bands through the burst_size parameter.

stats

If set, enables the collection of meter and band statistics.

bands=band_parameters

The add-meter and mod-meter commands require at least one band specification. Bands must appear after all other fields.

Daemon Options

--pidfile[=pidfile]

Causes a file (by default, ovs-ofctl.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 /var/run/openvswitch.

If --pidfile is not specified, no pidfile is created.

--overwrite-pidfile

By default, when --pidfile is specified and the specified pidfile already exists and is locked by a running process, ovs-ofctl refuses to start. Specify --overwrite-pidfile to cause it to instead overwrite the pidfile.

When --pidfile is not specified, this option has no effect.

--detach

Runs ovs-ofctl as a background process. The process forks, and in the child it starts a new session, closes the standard file descriptors (which has the side effect of disabling logging to the console), and changes its current directory to the root (unless --no-chdir is specified). After the child completes its initialization, the parent exits. ovs-ofctl detaches only when executing the monitor or snoop commands.

--monitor

Creates an additional process to monitor the ovs-ofctl daemon. If the daemon dies due to a signal that indicates a programming error (SIGABRT, SIGALRM, SIGBUS, SIGFPE, SIGILL, SIGPIPE, SIGSEGV, SIGXCPU, or SIGXFSZ) then the monitor process starts a new copy of it. If the daemon dies or exits for another reason, the monitor process exits.

This option is normally used with --detach, but it also functions without it.

--no-chdir

By default, when --detach is specified, ovs-ofctl changes its current working directory to the root directory after it detaches. Otherwise, invoking ovs-ofctl from a carelessly chosen directory would prevent the administrator from unmounting the file system that holds that directory.

Specifying --no-chdir suppresses this behavior, preventing ovs-ofctl from changing its current working directory. This may be useful for collecting core files, since it is common behavior to write core dumps into the current working directory and the root directory is not a good directory to use.

This option has no effect when --detach is not specified.

--no-self-confinement

By default daemon will try to self-confine itself to work with files under well-known directories determined during build. It is better to stick with this default behavior and not to use this flag unless some other Access Control is used to confine daemon. Note that in contrast to other access control implementations that are typically enforced from kernel-space (e.g. DAC or MAC), self-confinement is imposed from the user-space daemon itself and hence should not be considered as a full confinement strategy, but instead should be viewed as an additional layer of security.

--user

Causes ovs-ofctl to run as a different user specified in "user:group", thus dropping most of the root privileges. Short forms "user" and ":group" are also allowed, with current user or group are assumed respectively. Only daemons started by the root user accepts this argument.

On Linux, daemons will be granted CAP_IPC_LOCK and CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICES before dropping root privileges. Daemons that interact with a datapath, such as ovs-vswitchd, will be granted three additional capabilities, namely CAP_NET_ADMIN, CAP_NET_BROADCAST and CAP_NET_RAW. The capability change will apply even if the new user is root.

On Windows, this option is not currently supported. For security reasons, specifying this option will cause the daemon process not to start.

--unixctl=socket

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

On Windows a local named pipe is used to listen for runtime management commands. A file is created in the absolute path as pointed by socket or if --unixctl is not used at all, a file is created as ovs-ofctl.ctl in the configured OVS_RUNDIR directory. The file exists just to mimic the behavior of a Unix domain socket.

Specifying none for socket disables the control socket feature.

Public Key Infrastructure Options

-p privkey.pem

--private-key=privkey.pem

Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as ovs-ofctl's identity for outgoing SSL connections.

-c cert.pem

--certificate=cert.pem

Specifies a PEM file containing a certificate that certifies the private key specified on -p or --private-key to be trustworthy. The certificate must be signed by the certificate authority (CA) that the peer in SSL connections will use to verify it.

-C cacert.pem

--ca-cert=cacert.pem

Specifies a PEM file containing the CA certificate that ovs-ofctl should use to verify certificates presented to it by SSL peers. (This may be the same certificate that SSL peers use to verify the certificate specified on -c or --certificate, or it may be a different one, depending on the PKI design in use.)

-C none

--ca-cert=none

Disables verification of certificates presented by SSL peers. This introduces a security risk, because it means that certificates cannot be verified to be those of known trusted hosts.

-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:

Case is not significant within spec.

Regardless of the log levels set for file, logging to a file will not take place unless --log-file is also specified (see below).

For compatibility with older versions of OVS, any is accepted as a word but has no effect.

-v

--verbose

Sets the maximum logging verbosity level, equivalent to --verbose=dbg.

-vPATTERN:destination:pattern

--verbose=PATTERN:destination:pattern

Sets the log pattern for destination to pattern. Refer to ovs-appctl(8) for a description of the valid syntax for pattern.

-vFACILITY:facility

--verbose=FACILITY:facility

Sets the RFC5424 facility of the log message. facility can be one of kern, user, mail, daemon, auth, syslog, lpr, news, uucp, clock, ftp, ntp, audit, alert, clock2, local0, local1, local2, local3, local4, local5, local6 or local7. If this option is not specified, daemon is used as the default for the local system syslog and local0 is used while sending a message to the target provided via the --syslog-target option.

--log-file[=file]

Enables logging to a file. If file is specified, then it is used as the exact name for the log file. The default log file name used if file is omitted is /var/log/openvswitch/ovs-ofctl.log.

--syslog-target=host:port

Send syslog messages to UDP port on host, in addition to the system syslog. The host must be a numerical IP address, not a hostname.

--syslog-method=method

Specify method how syslog messages should be sent to syslog daemon. Following forms are supported:

The default is taken from the OVS_SYSLOG_METHOD environment variable; if it is unset, the default is libc.

--color[=when]

Colorize the output (for some commands); when can be never, always, or auto (the default).

-h

--help

Prints a brief help message to the console.

-V

--version

Prints version information to the console.