OVS-APPCTL(8) Open vSwitch OVS-APPCTL(8) NAME ovs-appctl - utility for configuring running Open vSwitch daemons SYNOPSIS ovs-appctl [--target=`` | ``-t ] [--timeout=`` | ``-T ] […] ovs-appctl --help ovs-appctl --version DESCRIPTION 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 doc‐ umented 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 dae‐ mon’s response on standard output. In normal use only a single option is accepted: • -t or --target Tells ovs-appctl which daemon to contact. If 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 ..ctl, where is the pro‐ gram’s name and 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 dec‐ imal number, named .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 ..ctl, where 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, 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 .ctl located inside the rundir. If is not an abso‐ lute path, ovs-appctl looks in the rundir for a file named .ctl. The default target is ovs-vswitchd. • -T or --timeout= By default, or with a of 0, ovs-appctl waits forever to con‐ nect to the daemon and receive a response. This option limits run‐ time to approximately seconds. If the timeout expires, ovs-appctl exits with a SIGALRM signal. COMMON COMMANDS 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 ver‐ sion. 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 desti‐ nation’s log level to off disables logging to that destination. The following log levels, in order of descending severity, are avail‐ able: • emer A major failure forced a process to abort. • err A high-level operation or a subsystem failed. Attention is war‐ ranted. • 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 [] Sets logging levels. Without any , sets the log level for ev‐ ery module and destination to dbg. Otherwise, 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 was started with the --syslog-target option (it has no effect otherwise). • off, emer, err, warn, info, or dbg, to control the log level. Mes‐ sages of the given severity or higher will be logged, and messages of lower severity will be filtered out. off filters out all mes‐ sages. Case is not significant within . 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 but it has no effect. • vlog/set PATTERN:: Sets the log pattern for to . Each time a message is logged to , determines the mes‐ sage’s formatting. Most characters in are copied literally to the log, but special escapes beginning with % are expanded as fol‐ lows: • %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{} The current date and time in the specified , which takes the same format as the