ovs-testcontroller(8) Open vSwitch Manual ovs-testcontroller(8)
NAME
ovs-testcontroller - simple OpenFlow controller for testing
SYNOPSIS
ovs-testcontroller [options] method [method]...
DESCRIPTION
ovs-testcontroller is a simple OpenFlow controller that manages any
number of switches over the OpenFlow protocol, causing them to function
as L2 MAC-learning switches or hubs. It is suitable for initial test‐
ing of OpenFlow networks. It is not a necessary or desirable part of a
production OpenFlow deployment.
ovs-testcontroller controls one or more OpenFlow switches, specified as
one or more of the following OpenFlow connection methods:
pssl:[port][:host]
ptcp:[port][:host]
Listens for OpenFlow connections on port. The default
port is 6653. By default, connections are allowed from
any IPv4 address. Specify host as an IPv4 address or a
bracketed IPv6 address (e.g. ptcp:6653:[::1]). On Linux,
use %device to designate a scope for IPv6 link-level ad‐
dresses, e.g. ptcp:6653:[fe80::1234%eth0]. DNS names can
be used if built with unbound library. For pssl, the
--private-key,--certificate, and --ca-cert options are
mandatory.
punix:file
Listens for OpenFlow connections on the Unix domain
server socket named file.
ssl:host[:port]
tcp:host[:port]
The specified port on the given host, which can be ex‐
pressed either as a DNS name (if built with unbound li‐
brary) or an IP address in IPv4 or IPv6 address format.
Wrap IPv6 addresses in square brackets, e.g.
tcp:[::1]:6653. On Linux, use %device to designate a
scope for IPv6 link-level addresses, e.g.
tcp:[fe80::1234%eth0]:6653. For ssl, the --private-key,
--certificate, and --ca-cert options are mandatory.
If port is not specified, it defaults to 6653.
unix:file
On POSIX, a Unix domain server socket named file.
On Windows, connect to a local named pipe that is repre‐
sented by a file created in the path file to mimic the
behavior of a Unix domain socket.
OPTIONS
-n
--noflow
By default, ovs-testcontroller sets up a flow in each OpenFlow
switch whenever it receives a packet whose destination is known
due through MAC learning. This option disables flow setup, so
that every packet in the network passes through the controller.
This option is most useful for debugging. It reduces switching
performance, so it should not be used in production.
--max-idle=secs|permanent
Sets secs as the number of seconds that a flow set up by the
controller will remain in the switch's flow table without any
matching packets being seen. If permanent is specified, which
is not recommended, flows will never expire. The default is 60
seconds.
This option has no effect when -n (or --noflow) is in use (be‐
cause the controller does not set up flows in that case).
-H
--hub By default, the controller acts as an L2 MAC-learning switch.
This option changes its behavior to that of a hub that floods
packets on all but the incoming port.
If -H (or --hub) and -n (or --noflow) are used together, then
the cumulative effect is that every packet passes through the
controller and every packet is flooded.
This option is most useful for debugging. It reduces switching
performance, so it should not be used in production.
-w[wildcard_mask]
--wildcards[=wildcard_mask]
By default, ovs-testcontroller sets up exact-match flows. This
option allows it to set up wildcarded flows, which may reduce
flow setup latency by causing less traffic to be sent up to the
controller.
The optional wildcard_mask is an OpenFlow wildcard bitmask in
hexadecimal that specifies the fields to wildcard. If no wild‐
card_mask is specified, the default value 0x2820F0 is used which
specifies L2-only switching and wildcards L3 and L4 fields. An‐
other interesting value is 0x2000EC, which specifies L3-only
switching and wildcards L2 and L4 fields.
This option has no effect when -n (or --noflow) is in use (be‐
cause the controller does not set up flows in that case).
-N
--normal
By default, ovs-testcontroller directs packets to a particular
port or floods them. This option causes it to direct non-
flooded packets to the OpenFlow OFPP_NORMAL port. This allows
the switch itself to make decisions about packet destinations.
Support for OFPP_NORMAL is optional in OpenFlow, so this option
may not well with some non-Open vSwitch switches.
--mute Prevents ovs-testcontroller from replying to any OpenFlow mes‐
sages sent to it by switches.
This option is only for debugging the Open vSwitch implementa‐
tion of ``fail open'' mode. It must not be used in production.
-q id
--queue=id
By default, ovs-testcontroller uses the default OpenFlow queue
for sending packets and setting up flows. Use one of these op‐
tions, supplying id as an OpenFlow queue ID as a decimal number,
to instead use that specific queue.
This option is incompatible with -N or --normal and with -H or
--hub. If more than one is specified then this option takes
precedence.
This option may be useful for testing or debugging quality of
service setups.
-Q port-name:queue-id
--port-queue port-name:queue-id
Configures packets received on the port named port-name (e.g.
eth0) to be output on OpenFlow queue ID queue-id (specified as a
decimal number). For the specified port, this option overrides
the default specified on -q or --queue.
This option may be specified any number of times with different
port-name arguments.
This option is incompatible with -N or --normal and with -H or
--hub. If more than one is specified then this option takes
precedence.
This option may be useful for testing or debugging quality of
service setups.
--with-flows file
When a switch connects, push the flow entries as described in
file. Each line in file is a flow entry in the format described
for the add-flows command in the Flow Syntax section of the
ovs-ofctl(8) man page.
Use this option more than once to add flows from multiple files.
Public Key Infrastructure Options
-p privkey.pem
--private-key=privkey.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as
ovs-testcontroller's identity for outgoing SSL/TLS 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/TLS connections will use to verify it.
-C cacert.pem
--ca-cert=cacert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the CA certificate that
ovs-testcontroller should use to verify certificates presented
to it by SSL/TLS peers. (This may be the same certificate that
SSL/TLS 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/TLS
peers. This introduces a security risk, because it means that
certificates cannot be verified to be those of known trusted
hosts.
--peer-ca-cert=peer-cacert.pem
Specifies a PEM file that contains one or more additional cer‐
tificates to send to SSL/TLS peers. peer-cacert.pem should be
the CA certificate used to sign ovs-testcontroller's own cer‐
tificate, that is, the certificate specified on -c or --certifi‐
cate. If ovs-testcontroller'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/TLS peer must already have the CA certificate for the peer
to have any confidence in ovs-testcontroller's identity. How‐
ever, this offers a way for a new installation to bootstrap the
CA certificate on its first SSL/TLS connection.
Daemon Options
The following options are valid on POSIX based platforms.
--pidfile[=pidfile]
Causes a file (by default, ovs-testcontroller.pid) to be created
indicating the PID of the running process. If the pidfile argu‐
ment is not specified, or if it does not begin with /, then it
is created in /usr/local/var/run/openvswitch.
If --pidfile is not specified, no pidfile is created.
--overwrite-pidfile
By default, when --pidfile is specified and the specified pid‐
file already exists and is locked by a running process,
ovs-testcontroller refuses to start. Specify --overwrite-pid‐
file to cause it to instead overwrite the pidfile.
When --pidfile is not specified, this option has no effect.
--detach
Runs ovs-testcontroller 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 dis‐
abling logging to the console), and changes its current direc‐
tory to the root (unless --no-chdir is specified). After the
child completes its initialization, the parent exits.
--monitor
Creates an additional process to monitor the ovs-testcontroller
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 an‐
other reason, the monitor process exits.
This option is normally used with --detach, but it also func‐
tions without it.
--no-chdir
By default, when --detach is specified, ovs-testcontroller
changes its current working directory to the root directory af‐
ter it detaches. Otherwise, invoking ovs-testcontroller 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-testcontroller 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 implemen‐
tations 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-testcontroller 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.
-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 com‐
mand 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, ovs-testcon‐
troller 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 be‐
low).
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 --ver‐
bose=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/open‐
vswitch/ovs-testcontroller.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 dae‐
mon. Following forms are supported:
• libc, use 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, use UNIX domain socket directly. It is possi‐
ble 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, use UDP socket. With this method it is pos‐
sible 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 ex‐
ample, 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, discards all messages logged to syslog.
The default is taken from the OVS_SYSLOG_METHOD environment
variable; if it is unset, the default is libc.
--unixctl=socket
Sets the name of the control socket on which ovs-testcontroller
listens for runtime management commands (see RUNTIME MANAGEMENT
COMMANDS, below). If socket does not begin with /, it is inter‐
preted as relative to /usr/local/var/run/openvswitch. If
--unixctl is not used at all, the default socket is /usr/lo‐
cal/var/run/openvswitch/ovs-testcontroller.pid.ctl, where pid is
ovs-testcontroller's process ID.
On Windows a local named pipe is used to listen for runtime man‐
agement 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-testcontroller.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.
-h
--help Prints a brief help message to the console.
-V
--version
Prints version information to the console.
-O [version[,version]...]
--protocols=[version[,version]...]
Sets the OpenFlow protocol versions that are allowed when estab‐
lishing an OpenFlow session.
These protocol versions are enabled by default:
• OpenFlow10, for OpenFlow 1.0.
The following protocol versions are generally supported, but for com‐
patibility with older versions of Open vSwitch they are not enabled by
default:
• OpenFlow11, for OpenFlow 1.1.
• OpenFlow12, for OpenFlow 1.2.
• OpenFlow13, for OpenFlow 1.3.
• OpenFlow14, for OpenFlow 1.4.
• OpenFlow15, for OpenFlow 1.5.
EXAMPLES
To bind locally to port 6653 (the default) and wait for incoming con‐
nections from OpenFlow switches:
% ovs-testcontroller ptcp:
SEE ALSO
ovs-appctl(8), ovs-ofctl(8), ovs-dpctl(8)
Open vSwitch 3.5.0 ovs-testcontroller(8)