1ovs-appctl(8) Open vSwitch Manual ovs-appctl(8)
2
6 ovs-appctl - utility for configuring running Open vSwitch daemons
7
9 ovs-appctl [--target=target | -t target] command [arg...]
10 ovs-appctl --help
11 ovs-appctl --version
12
14 Open vSwitch daemons accept certain commands at runtime to control
15 their behavior and query their settings. Every daemon accepts a common
16 set of commands documented under COMMON COMMANDS below. Some daemons
17 support additional commands documented in their own manpages.
18 ovs-vswitchd in particular accepts a number of additional commands doc‐
19 umented in ovs-vswitchd(8).
20 The ovs-appctl program provides a simple way to invoke these commands.
22 The command to be sent is specified on ovs-appctl's command line as
23 non-option arguments. ovs-appctl sends the command and prints the dae‐
24 mon's response on standard output.
25 In normal use only a single option is accepted:
27 -t target
29 --target=target
30 Tells ovs-appctl which daemon to contact.
31 If target begins with / it must name a Unix domain socket on
33 which an Open vSwitch daemon is listening for control channel
34 connections. By default, each daemon listens on a Unix domain
35 socket named /var/run/openvswitch/program.pid.ctl, where program
36 is the program's name and pid is its process ID. For example,
37 if ovs-vswitchd has PID 123, it would listen on /var/run/open‐
38 vswitch/ovs-vswitchd.123.ctl.
39 Otherwise, ovs-appctl looks for a pidfile, that is, a file whose
41 contents are the process ID of a running process as a decimal
42 number, named /var/run/openvswitch/target.pid. (The --pidfile
43 option makes an Open vSwitch daemon create a pidfile.)
44 ovs-appctl reads the pidfile, then looks for a Unix socket named
45 /var/run/openvswitch/target.pid.ctl, where pid is replaced by
46 the process ID read from the pidfile, and uses that file as if
47 it had been specified directly as the target.
48 The default target is ovs-vswitchd.
50
52 Every Open vSwitch daemon supports a common set of commands, which are
53 documented in this section.
54 GENERAL COMMANDS
56 These commands display daemon-specific commands and the running ver‐
57 sion. Note that these commands are different from the --help and
58 --version options that return information about the ovs-appctl utility
59 itself.
60 help Lists the commands supported by the target.
62 version
64 Displays the version and compilation date of the target.
65 LOGGING COMMANDS
67 Open vSwitch has several log levels. The highest-severity log level
68 is:
69 off No message is ever logged at this level, so setting a logging
71 facility's log level to off disables logging to that facility.
72 The following log levels, in order of descending severity, are avail‐
74 able:
75 emer A major failure forced a process to abort.
77 err A high-level operation or a subsystem failed. Attention is war‐
79 ranted.
80 warn A low-level operation failed, but higher-level subsystems may be
82 able to recover.
83 info Information that may be useful in retrospect when investigating
85 a problem.
86 dbg Information useful only to someone with intricate knowledge of
88 the system, or that would commonly cause too-voluminous log out‐
89 put. Log messages at this level are not logged by default.
90 Every Open vSwitch daemon supports the following commands for examining
92 and adjusting log levels.
93 vlog/list
95 Lists the known logging modules and their current levels.
96 vlog/set [spec]
98 Sets logging levels. Without any spec, sets the log level for
99 every module and facility to dbg. Otherwise, spec is a list of
100 words separated by spaces or commas or colons, up to one from
101 each category below:
102 · A valid module name, as displayed by the vlog/list com‐
104 mand on ovs-appctl(8), limits the log level change to the
105 specified module.
106 · syslog, console, or file, to limit the log level change
108 to only to the system log, to the console, or to a file,
109 respectively.
110 · off, emer, err, warn, info, or dbg, to control the log
112 level. Messages of the given severity or higher will be
113 logged, and messages of lower severity will be filtered
114 out. off filters out all messages.
115 Case is not significant within spec.
117 Regardless of the log levels set for file, logging to a file
119 will not take place unless the target application was invoked
120 with the --log-file option.
121 For compatibility with older versions of OVS, any is accepted as
123 a word but has no effect.
124 vlog/set PATTERN:facility:pattern
126 Sets the log pattern for facility to pattern. Each time a mes‐
127 sage is logged to facility, pattern determines the message's
128 formatting. Most characters in pattern are copied literally to
129 the log, but special escapes beginning with % are expanded as
130 follows:
131 %A The name of the application logging the message, e.g.
133 ovs-vswitchd.
134 %c The name of the module (as shown by ovs-appctl --list)
136 logging the message.
137 %d The current date and time in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD
139 HH:MM:SS).
140 %d{format}
142 The current date and time in the specified format, which
143 takes the same format as the template argument to strf‐
144 time(3). As an extension, any # characters in format
145 will be replaced by fractional seconds, e.g. use
146 %H:%M:%S.### for the time to the nearest millisecond.
147 Sub-second times are only approximate and currently deci‐
148 mal places after the third will always be reported as
149 zero.
150 %D The current UTC date and time in ISO 8601 format
152 (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS).
153 %D{format}
155 The current UTC date and time in the specified format,
156 which takes the same format as the template argument to
157 strftime(3). Supports the same extension for sub-second
158 resolution as %d{...}.
159 %m The message being logged.
161 %N A serial number for this message within this run of the
163 program, as a decimal number. The first message a pro‐
164 gram logs has serial number 1, the second one has serial
165 number 2, and so on.
166 %n A new-line.
168 %p The level at which the message is logged, e.g. DBG.
170 %P The program's process ID (pid), as a decimal number.
172 %r The number of milliseconds elapsed from the start of the
174 application to the time the message was logged.
175 %t The subprogram name, that is, an identifying name for the
177 process or thread that emitted the log message, such as
178 monitor for the process used for --monitor or main for
179 the primary process or thread in a program.
180 %T The subprogram name enclosed in parentheses, e.g. (moni‐
182 tor), or the empty string for the primary process or
183 thread in a program.
184 %% A literal %.
186 A few options may appear between the % and the format specifier
188 character, in this order:
189 - Left justify the escape's expansion within its field
191 width. Right justification is the default.
192 0 Pad the field to the field width with 0s. Padding with
194 spaces is the default.
195 width A number specifies the minimum field width. If the
197 escape expands to fewer characters than width then it is
198 padded to fill the field width. (A field wider than
199 width is not truncated to fit.)
200 The default pattern for console and file output is %D{%Y-%m-%dT
202 %H:%M:%SZ}|%05N|%c|%p|%m; for syslog output, %05N|%c|%p|%m.
203 Daemons written in Python (e.g. ovs-xapi-sync, ovs-moni‐
205 tor-ipsec) do not allow control over the log pattern.
206 vlog/reopen
208 Causes the daemon to close and reopen its log file. (This is
209 useful after rotating log files, to cause a new log file to be
210 used.)
211 This has no effect if the target application was not invoked
213 with the --log-file option.
214
216 -h
217 --help Prints a brief help message to the console.
218 -V
220 --version
221 Prints version information to the console.
222
224 ovs-appctl can control all Open vSwitch daemons, including:
225 ovs-vswitchd(8), and ovsdb-server(8).
226Open vSwitch 2.0.0 ovs-appctl(8)