ovn-ic(8) OVN Manual ovn-ic(8)
NAME
ovn-ic - Open Virtual Network interconnection controller
SYNOPSIS
ovn-ic [options]
DESCRIPTION
ovn-ic, OVN interconnection controller, is a centralized daemon which
communicates with global interconnection databases IC_NB/IC_SB to con‐
figure and exchange data with local NB/SB for interconnecting with
other OVN deployments.
OPTIONS
--ovnnb-db=database
The OVSDB database containing the OVN Northbound Database. If
the OVN_NB_DB environment variable is set, its value is used as
the default. Otherwise, the default is unix:/ovnnb_db.sock.
--ovnsb-db=database
The OVSDB database containing the OVN Southbound Database. If
the OVN_SB_DB environment variable is set, its value is used as
the default. Otherwise, the default is unix:/ovnsb_db.sock.
--ic-nb-db=database
The OVSDB database containing the OVN Interconnection Northbound
Database. If the OVN_IC_NB_DB environment variable is set, its
value is used as the default. Otherwise, the default is
unix:/ovn_ic_nb_db.sock.
--ic-sb-db=database
The OVSDB database containing the OVN Interconnection Southbound
Database. If the OVN_IC_SB_DB environment variable is set, its
value is used as the default. Otherwise, the default is
unix:/ovn_ic_sb_db.sock.
database in the above options must be an OVSDB active or passive con‐
nection method, as described in ovsdb(7).
Daemon Options
--pidfile[=pidfile]
Causes a file (by default, program.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
.
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, the dae‐
mon 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 this program 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.
--monitor
Creates an additional process to monitor this program. If it
dies due to a signal that indicates a programming error (SIGA‐
BRT, 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 func‐
tions without it.
--no-chdir
By default, when --detach is specified, the daemon changes its
current working directory to the root directory after it
detaches. Otherwise, invoking the daemon from a carelessly cho‐
sen directory would prevent the administrator from unmounting
the file system that holds that directory.
Specifying --no-chdir suppresses this behavior, preventing the
daemon 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 this daemon will try to self-confine itself to work
with files under well-known directories determined at build
time. 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 addi‐
tional layer of security.
--user=user:group
Causes this program 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 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.
Logging Options
-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 command
on ovs-appctl(8), limits the log level change to the speci‐
fied 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, the daemon 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 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 --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/ovn/program.log.
--syslog-target=host:port
Send syslog messages to UDP port on host, in addition to the sys‐
tem syslog. The host must be a numerical IP address, not a host‐
name.
--syslog-method=method
Specify method as how syslog messages should be sent to syslog
daemon. The following forms are supported:
· libc, to use the libc syslog() function. Downside of using
this options is that libc adds fixed prefix to every mes‐
sage before it is actually sent to the syslog daemon over
/dev/log UNIX domain socket.
· unix:file, to use a UNIX domain socket directly. It is pos‐
sible 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, to use a UDP socket. With this method it is
possible 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 exam‐
ple, 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, to discard all messages logged to syslog.
The default is taken from the OVS_SYSLOG_METHOD environment vari‐
able; if it is unset, the default is libc.
PKI Options
PKI configuration is required in order to use SSL for the connections
to the Northbound and Southbound databases.
-p privkey.pem
--private-key=privkey.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used as
identity for outgoing SSL connections.
-c cert.pem
--certificate=cert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing a certificate that certi‐
fies the private key specified on -p or --private-key to be
trustworthy. The certificate must be signed by the certifi‐
cate 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 for ver‐
ifying certificates presented to this program 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.
Other Options
--unixctl=socket
Sets the name of the control socket on which program listens for
runtime management commands (see RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS,
below). If socket does not begin with /, it is interpreted as
relative to . If --unixctl is not used at all, the default
socket is /program.pid.ctl, where pid is program’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 program 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.
RUNTIME MANAGEMENT COMMANDS
ovs-appctl can send commands to a running ovn-ic process. The currently
supported commands are described below.
exit Causes ovn-ic to gracefully terminate.
pause Pauses the ovn-ic operation from processing any database
changes. This will also instruct ovn-ic to drop any lock
on SB DB.
resume Resumes the ovn-ic operation to process database con‐
tents. This will also instruct ovn-northd to aspire for
the lock on SB DB.
is-paused
Returns "true" if ovn-ic is currently paused, "false"
otherwise.
status Prints this server’s status. Status will be "active" if
ovn-ic has acquired OVSDB lock on SB DB, "standby" if it
has not or "paused" if this instance is paused.
ACTIVE-STANDBY FOR HIGH AVAILABILITY
You may run ovn-ic more than once in an OVN deployment. When connected
to a standalone or clustered DB setup, OVN will automatically ensure
that only one of them is active at a time. If multiple instances of
ovn-ic are running and the active ovn-ic fails, one of the hot standby
instances of ovn-ic will automatically take over.
OVN 21.06.1 ovn-ic ovn-ic(8)