ovs-appctl(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMON COMMANDS | OPTIONS | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | COPYRIGHT | COLOPHON

OVS-APPCTL(8)                 Open vSwitch                 OVS-APPCTL(8)

NAME         top

       ovs-appctl - utility for configuring running Open vSwitch daemons

SYNOPSIS         top

       ovs-appctl [--target=``<target> | ``-t <target>]
       [--timeout=``<secs> | ``-T <secs>] <command> [<arg>…]

       ovs-appctl --help

       ovs-appctl --version

DESCRIPTION         top

       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.

COMMON COMMANDS         top

       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.

OPTIONS         top

       -h, --help
              Prints a brief help message to the console.

       -V, --version
              Prints version information to the console.

SEE ALSO         top

       ovs-appctl can control all Open vSwitch daemons, including
       ovs-vswitchd(8) and ovsdb-server(1).

AUTHOR         top

       The Open vSwitch Development Community

COPYRIGHT         top

       2016-2021, The Open vSwitch Development Community

COLOPHON         top

       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 bugs@openvswitch.org.  This page was
       obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-21.)  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

3.2.90                        Dec 22, 2023                 OVS-APPCTL(8)

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