|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|
|
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | DAEMON MODE | OPTIONS | COMMANDS | ENVIRONMENT | EXIT STATUS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
|
|
|
ovn-sbctl(8) OVN Manual ovn-sbctl(8)
ovn-sbctl - Open Virtual Network southbound db management utility
ovn-sbctl [options] command [arg...]
The ovn-sbctl program configures the OVN_Southbound database by
providing a high-level interface to its configuration database.
See ovn-sb(5) for comprehensive documentation of the database
schema.
ovn-sbctl connects to an ovsdb-server process that maintains an
OVN_Southbound configuration database. Using this connection, it
queries and possibly applies changes to the database, depending on
the supplied commands.
ovn-sbctl can perform any number of commands in a single run,
implemented as a single atomic transaction against the database.
The ovn-sbctl command line begins with global options (see OPTIONS
below for details). The global options are followed by one or more
commands. Each command should begin with -- by itself as a
command-line argument, to separate it from the following commands.
(The -- before the first command is optional.) The command itself
starts with command-specific options, if any, followed by the
command name and any arguments.
When it is invoked in the most ordinary way, ovn-sbctl connects to
an OVSDB server that hosts the southbound database, retrieves a
partial copy of the database that is complete enough to do its
work, sends a transaction request to the server, and receives and
processes the server’s reply. In common interactive use, this is
fine, but if the database is large, the step in which ovn-sbctl
retrieves a partial copy of the database can take a long time,
which yields poor performance overall.
To improve performance in such a case, ovn-sbctl offers a "daemon
mode," in which the user first starts ovn-sbctl running in the
background and afterward uses the daemon to execute operations.
Over several ovn-sbctl command invocations, this performs better
overall because it retrieves a copy of the database only once at
the beginning, not once per program run.
Use the --detach option to start an ovn-sbctl daemon. With this
option, ovn-sbctl prints the name of a control socket to stdout.
The client should save this name in environment variable
OVN_SB_DAEMON. Under the Bourne shell this might be done like
this:
export OVN_SB_DAEMON=$(ovn-sbctl --pidfile --detach)
When OVN_SB_DAEMON is set, ovn-sbctl automatically and
transparently uses the daemon to execute its commands.
When the daemon is no longer needed, kill it and unset the
environment variable, e.g.:
kill $(cat $OVN_RUNDIR/ovn-sbctl.pid)
unset OVN_SB_DAEMON
When using daemon mode, an alternative to the OVN_SB_DAEMON
environment variable is to specify a path for the Unix socket.
When starting the ovn-sbctl daemon, specify the -u option with a
full path to the location of the socket file. Here is an exmple:
ovn-sbctl --detach -u /tmp/mysock.ctl
Then to connect to the running daemon, use the -u option with the
full path to the socket created when the daemon was started:
ovn-sbctl -u /tmp/mysock.ctl show
Daemon Commands
Daemon mode is internally implemented using the same mechanism
used by ovn-appctl. One may also use ovn-appctl directly with the
following commands:
run [options] command [arg...] [-- [options] command
[arg...] ...]
Instructs the daemon process to run one or more
ovn-sbctl commands described above and reply with
the results of running these commands. Accepts the
--timeout, --dry-run, --oneline, and the options
described under Table Formatting Options in addition
to the the command-specific options.
exit Causes ovn-sbctl to gracefully terminate.
The options listed below affect the behavior of ovn-sbctl as a
whole. Some individual commands also accept their own options,
which are given just before the command name. If the first command
on the command line has options, then those options must be
separated from the global options by --.
ovn-sbctl also accepts options from the OVN_SBCTL_OPTIONS
environment variable, in the same format as on the command line.
Options from the command line override those in the environment.
--db database
The OVSDB database remote to contact. If the
OVN_SB_DB environment variable is set, its value is
used as the default. Otherwise, the default is
unix:/ovnsb_db.sock, but this default is unlikely to
be useful outside of single-machine OVN test
environments.
--leader-only
--no-leader-only
By default, or with --leader-only, when the database
server is a clustered database, ovn-sbctl will avoid
servers other than the cluster leader. This ensures
that any data that ovn-sbctl reads and reports is up-
to-date. With --no-leader-only, ovn-sbctl will use any
server in the cluster, which means that for read-only
transactions it can report and act on stale data
(transactions that modify the database are always
serialized even with --no-leader-only). Refer to
Understanding Cluster Consistency in ovsdb(7) for more
information.
--shuffle-remotes
--no-shuffle-remotes
By default, or with --shuffle-remotes, when there are
multiple remotes specified in the OVSDB connection
string specified by --db or the OVN_SB_DB environment
variable, the order of the remotes will be shuffled
before the client tries to connect. The remotes will
be shuffled only once to a new order before the first
connection attempt. The following retries, if any,
will follow the same new order. The default behavior
is to make sure clients of a clustered database can
distribute evenly to all members of the cluster. With
--no-shuffle-remotes, ovn-sbctl will use the original
order specified in the connection string to connect.
This allows user to specify the preferred order, which
is particularly useful for testing.
--no-syslog
By default, ovn-sbctl logs its arguments and the
details of any changes that it makes to the system
log. This option disables this logging.
This option is equivalent to
--verbose=sbctl:syslog:warn.
--oneline
Modifies the output format so that the output for each
command is printed on a single line. New-line
characters that would otherwise separate lines are
printed as \fB\\n\fR, and any instances of \fB\\\fR
that would otherwise appear in the output are doubled.
Prints a blank line for each command that has no
output. This option does not affect the formatting of
output from the list or find commands; see Table
Formatting Options below.
--dry-run
Prevents ovn-sbctl from actually modifying the
database.
-t secs
--timeout=secs
By default, or with a secs of 0, ovn-sbctl waits
forever for a response from the database. This option
limits runtime to approximately secs seconds. If the
timeout expires, ovn-sbctl will exit with a SIGALRM
signal. (A timeout would normally happen only if the
database cannot be contacted, or if the system is
overloaded.)
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
pidfile already exists and is locked by a running process,
the daemon 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
(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
another reason, the monitor process exits.
This option is normally used with --detach, but it also
functions 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 chosen 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 additional
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 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,
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
--verbose=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
system syslog. The host must be a numerical IP address, not a
hostname.
--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 message 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
possible 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 example, 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
variable; if it is unset, the default is libc.
Table Formatting Options
These options control the format of output from the list and find
commands.
-f format
--format=format
Sets the type of table formatting. The following types
of format are available:
table 2-D text tables with aligned columns.
list (default)
A list with one column per line and rows
separated by a blank line.
html HTML tables.
csv Comma-separated values as defined in RFC 4180.
json JSON format as defined in RFC 4627. The output
is a sequence of JSON objects, each of which
corresponds to one table. Each JSON object has
the following members with the noted values:
caption
The table’s caption. This member is
omitted if the table has no caption.
headings
An array with one element per table
column. Each array element is a string
giving the corresponding column’s
heading.
data An array with one element per table row.
Each element is also an array with one
element per table column. The elements
of this second-level array are the cells
that constitute the table. Cells that
represent OVSDB data or data types are
expressed in the format described in the
OVSDB specification; other cells are
simply expressed as text strings.
-d format
--data=format
Sets the formatting for cells within output tables
unless the table format is set to json, in which case
json formatting is always used when formatting cells.
The following types of format are available:
string (default)
The simple format described in the Database
Values section of ovs-vsctl(8).
bare The simple format with punctuation stripped
off: [] and {} are omitted around sets, maps,
and empty columns, items within sets and maps
are space-separated, and strings are never
quoted. This format may be easier for scripts
to parse.
json The RFC 4627 JSON format as described above.
--no-headings
This option suppresses the heading row that otherwise
appears in the first row of table output.
--pretty
By default, JSON in output is printed as compactly as
possible. This option causes JSON in output to be
printed in a more readable fashion. Members of objects
and elements of arrays are printed one per line, with
indentation.
This option does not affect JSON in tables, which is
always printed compactly.
--bare
Equivalent to --format=list --data=bare --no-headings.
PKI Options
PKI configuration is required to use SSL/TLS for the connection to
the database.
-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
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 connections will use to verify it.
-C cacert.pem
--ca-cert=cacert.pem
Specifies a PEM file containing the CA certificate for
verifying 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.
--bootstrap-ca-cert=cacert.pem
When cacert.pem exists, this option has the same
effect as -C or --ca-cert. If it does not exist,
then the executable will attempt to obtain the CA
certificate from the SSL peer on its first SSL
connection and save it to the named PEM file. If it
is successful, it will immediately drop the
connection and reconnect, and from then on all SSL
connections must be authenticated by a certificate
signed by the CA certificate thus obtained.
This option exposes the SSL connection to a man-in-
the-middle attack obtaining the initial CA
certificate, but it may be useful for bootstrapping.
This option is only useful if the SSL peer sends its
CA certificate as part of the SSL certificate chain.
The SSL protocol does not require the server to send
the CA certificate.
This option is mutually exclusive with -C and
--ca-cert.
Other Options
-h
--help
Prints a brief help message to the console.
-V
--version
Prints version information to the console.
The following sections describe the commands that ovn-sbctl
supports.
OVN_Southbound Commands
These commands work with an OVN_Southbound database as a whole.
init Initializes the database, if it is empty. If the
database has already been initialized, this command
has no effect.
show Prints a brief overview of the database contents.
Chassis Commands
These commands manipulate OVN_Southbound chassis.
[--may-exist] chassis-add chassis encap-type encap-ip
Creates a new chassis named chassis. encap-type is a
comma-separated list of tunnel types. The chassis
will have one encap entry for each specified tunnel
type with encap-ip as the destination IP for each.
Without --may-exist, attempting to create a chassis
that exists is an error. With --may-exist, this
command does nothing if chassis already exists.
[--if-exists] chassis-del chassis
Deletes chassis and its encaps and gateway_ports.
Without --if-exists, attempting to delete a chassis
that does not exist is an error. With --if-exists
attempting to delete a chassis that does not exist
has no effect.
Port Binding Commands
These commands manipulate OVN_Southbound port bindings.
[--may-exist] lsp-bind logical-port chassis
Binds the logical port named logical-port to
chassis.
Without --may-exist, attempting to bind a logical
port that has already been bound is an error. With
--may-exist, this command does nothing if logical-
port has already been bound to a chassis.
[--if-exists] lsp-unbind logical-port
Removes the binding of logical-port.
Without --if-exists, attempting to unbind a logical
port that is not bound is an error. With
--if-exists, attempting to unbind logical port that
is not bound has no effect.
Logical Flow Commands
[--uuid] [--ovs[=remote]] [--stats] [--vflows] lflow-list
[logical-datapath] [lflow...]
List logical flows. If logical-datapath is specified, only
list flows for that logical datapath. The logical-datapath
may be given as a UUID or as a datapath name (reporting an
error if multiple datapaths have the same name).
If at least one lflow is given, only matching logical
flows, if any, are listed. Each lflow may be specified as a
UUID or the first few characters of a UUID, optionally
prefixed by 0x. (Because ovn-controller sets OpenFlow flow
cookies to the first 32 bits of the corresponding logical
flow’s UUID, this makes it easy to look up the logical flow
that generated a particular OpenFlow flow.)
If --uuid is specified, the output includes the first 32
bits of each logical flow’s UUID. This makes it easier to
find the OpenFlow flows that correspond to a given logical
flow.
If --ovs is included, ovn-sbctl attempts to obtain and
display the OpenFlow flows that correspond to each OVN
logical flow. To do so, ovn-sbctl connects to remote (by
default, unix:/br-int.mgmt) over OpenFlow and retrieves the
flows. If remote is specified, it must be an active
OpenFlow connection method described in ovsdb(7). Please
see the discussion of the similar --ovs option in
ovn-trace(8) for more information about the OpenFlow flow
output.
By default, OpenFlow flow output includes only match and
actions. Add --stats to include all OpenFlow information,
such as packet and byte counters, duration, and timeouts.
If --vflows is included, other southbound database records
directly used for generating OpenFlow flows are also
listed. This includes: port-bindings, mac-bindings,
multicast-groups, chassis. The --ovs and --stats can also
be used in conjunction with --vflows.
[--uuid] dump-flows [logical-datapath]
Alias for lflow-list.
count-flows [logical-datapath]
prints numbers of logical flows per table and per datapath.
Remote Connectivity Commands
These commands manipulate the connections column in the SB_Global
table and rows in the Connection table. When ovsdb-server is
configured to use the connections column for OVSDB connections,
this allows the administrator to use \fBovn\-sbctl\fR to configure
database connections.
get-connection
Prints the configured connection(s).
del-connection
Deletes the configured connection(s).
[--inactivity-probe=msecs] set-connection target...
Sets the configured manager target or targets. Use
--inactivity-probe=msecs to override the default
idle connection inactivity probe time. Use 0 to
disable inactivity probes.
SSL/TLS Configuration Commands
When ovsdb-server is configured to connect using SSL/TLS, the
following parameters are required:
private-key
Specifies a PEM file containing the private key used
for SSL/TLS connections.
certificate
Specifies a PEM file containing a certificate,
signed by the certificate authority (CA) used by the
connection peers, that certifies the private key,
identifying a trustworthy peer.
ca-cert
Specifies a PEM file containing the CA certificate
used to verify that the connection peers are
trustworthy.
These SSL/TLS settings apply to all SSL/TLS connections made by
the southbound database server.
get-ssl
Prints the SSL/TLS configuration.
del-ssl
Deletes the current SSL/TLS configuration.
[--bootstrap] set-ssl private-key certificate ca-cert [ssl-
protocol-list [ssl-cipher-list [ssl-ciphersuites]]]
Sets the SSL/TLS configuration.
Database Commands
These commands query and modify the contents of ovsdb tables. They
are a slight abstraction of the ovsdb interface and as such they
operate at a lower level than other ovn-sbctl commands.
Identifying Tables, Records, and Columns
Each of these commands has a table parameter to identify a table
within the database. Many of them also take a record parameter
that identifies a particular record within a table. The record
parameter may be the UUID for a record, which may be abbreviated
to its first 4 (or more) hex digits, as long as that is unique.
Many tables offer additional ways to identify records. Some
commands also take column parameters that identify a particular
field within the records in a table.
For a list of tables and their columns, see ovn-sb(5) or see the
table listing from the --help option.
Record names must be specified in full and with correct
capitalization, except that UUIDs may be abbreviated to their
first 4 (or more) hex digits, as long as that is unique within the
table. Names of tables and columns are not case-sensitive, and -
and _ are treated interchangeably. Unique abbreviations of table
and column names are acceptable, e.g. d or dhcp is sufficient to
identify the DHCP_Options table.
Database Values
Each column in the database accepts a fixed type of data. The
currently defined basic types, and their representations, are:
integer
A decimal integer in the range -2**63 to 2**63-1,
inclusive.
real A floating-point number.
Boolean
True or false, written true or false, respectively.
string An arbitrary Unicode string, except that null bytes
are not allowed. Quotes are optional for most
strings that begin with an English letter or
underscore and consist only of letters, underscores,
hyphens, and periods. However, true and false and
strings that match the syntax of UUIDs (see below)
must be enclosed in double quotes to distinguish
them from other basic types. When double quotes are
used, the syntax is that of strings in JSON, e.g.
backslashes may be used to escape special
characters. The empty string must be represented as
a pair of double quotes ("").
UUID Either a universally unique identifier in the style
of RFC 4122, e.g.
f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6, or an @name
defined by a get or create command within the same
ovs-vsctl invocation.
Multiple values in a single column may be separated by spaces or a
single comma. When multiple values are present, duplicates are not
allowed, and order is not important. Conversely, some database
columns can have an empty set of values, represented as [], and
square brackets may optionally enclose other non-empty sets or
single values as well.
A few database columns are ``maps’’ of key-value pairs, where the
key and the value are each some fixed database type. These are
specified in the form key=value, where key and value follow the
syntax for the column’s key type and value type, respectively.
When multiple pairs are present (separated by spaces or a comma),
duplicate keys are not allowed, and again the order is not
important. Duplicate values are allowed. An empty map is
represented as {}. Curly braces may optionally enclose non-empty
maps as well (but use quotes to prevent the shell from expanding
other-config={0=x,1=y} into other-config=0=x other-config=1=y,
which may not have the desired effect).
Database Command Syntax
[--if-exists] [--columns=column[,column]...] list table
[record]...
Lists the data in each specified record. If no
records are specified, lists all the records in
table.
If --columns is specified, only the requested
columns are listed, in the specified order.
Otherwise, all columns are listed, in alphabetical
order by column name.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if any specified
record does not exist. With --if-exists, the command
ignores any record that does not exist, without
producing any output.
[--columns=column[,column]...] find table
[column[:key]=value]...
Lists the data in each record in table whose column
equals value or, if key is specified, whose column
contains a key with the specified value. The
following operators may be used where = is written
in the syntax summary:
= != < > <= >=
Selects records in which column[:key] equals,
does not equal, is less than, is greater
than, is less than or equal to, or is greater
than or equal to value, respectively.
Consider column[:key] and value as sets of
elements. Identical sets are considered
equal. Otherwise, if the sets have different
numbers of elements, then the set with more
elements is considered to be larger.
Otherwise, consider a element from each set
pairwise, in increasing order within each
set. The first pair that differs determines
the result. (For a column that contains key-
value pairs, first all the keys are compared,
and values are considered only if the two
sets contain identical keys.)
{=} {!=}
Test for set equality or inequality,
respectively.
{<=} Selects records in which column[:key] is a
subset of value. For example,
flood-vlans{<=}1,2 selects records in which
the flood-vlans column is the empty set or
contains 1 or 2 or both.
{<} Selects records in which column[:key] is a
proper subset of value. For example,
flood-vlans{<}1,2 selects records in which
the flood-vlans column is the empty set or
contains 1 or 2 but not both.
{>=} {>}
Same as {<=} and {<}, respectively, except
that the relationship is reversed. For
example, flood-vlans{>=}1,2 selects records
in which the flood-vlans column contains both
1 and 2.
The following operators are available only in Open
vSwitch 2.16 and later:
{in} Selects records in which every element in
column[:key] is also in value. (This is the
same as {<=}.)
{not-in}
Selects records in which every element in
column[:key] is not in value.
For arithmetic operators (= != < > <= >=), when key
is specified but a particular record’s column does
not contain key, the record is always omitted from
the results. Thus, the condition
other-config:mtu!=1500 matches records that have a
mtu key whose value is not 1500, but not those that
lack an mtu key.
For the set operators, when key is specified but a
particular record’s column does not contain key, the
comparison is done against an empty set. Thus, the
condition other-config:mtu{!=}1500 matches records
that have a mtu key whose value is not 1500 and
those that lack an mtu key.
Don’t forget to escape < or > from interpretation by
the shell.
If --columns is specified, only the requested
columns are listed, in the specified order.
Otherwise all columns are listed, in alphabetical
order by column name.
The UUIDs shown for rows created in the same
ovs-vsctl invocation will be wrong.
[--if-exists] [--id=@name] get table record
[column[:key]]...
Prints the value of each specified column in the
given record in table. For map columns, a key may
optionally be specified, in which case the value
associated with key in the column is printed,
instead of the entire map.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does
not exist or key is specified, if key does not exist
in record. With --if-exists, a missing record yields
no output and a missing key prints a blank line.
If @name is specified, then the UUID for record may
be referred to by that name later in the same
ovs-vsctl invocation in contexts where a UUID is
expected.
Both --id and the column arguments are optional, but
usually at least one or the other should be
specified. If both are omitted, then get has no
effect except to verify that record exists in table.
--id and --if-exists cannot be used together.
[--if-exists] set table record column[:key]=value...
Sets the value of each specified column in the given
record in table to value. For map columns, a key may
optionally be specified, in which case the value
associated with key in that column is changed (or
added, if none exists), instead of the entire map.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does
not exist. With --if-exists, this command does
nothing if record does not exist.
[--if-exists] add table record column [key=]value...
Adds the specified value or key-value pair to column
in record in table. If column is a map, then key is
required, otherwise it is prohibited. If key already
exists in a map column, then the current value is
not replaced (use the set command to replace an
existing value).
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does
not exist. With --if-exists, this command does
nothing if record does not exist.
[--if-exists] remove table record column value...
[--if-exists] remove table record column key...
[--if-exists] remove table record column
key=value... Removes the specified values or key-
value pairs from column in record in table. The
first form applies to columns that are not maps:
each specified value is removed from the column. The
second and third forms apply to map columns: if only
a key is specified, then any key-value pair with the
given key is removed, regardless of its value; if a
value is given then a pair is removed only if both
key and value match.
It is not an error if the column does not contain
the specified key or value or pair.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does
not exist. With --if-exists, this command does
nothing if record does not exist.
[--if-exists] clear table record column...
Sets each column in record in table to the empty set
or empty map, as appropriate. This command applies
only to columns that are allowed to be empty.
Without --if-exists, it is an error if record does
not exist. With --if-exists, this command does
nothing if record does not exist.
[--id=(@name|uuid)] create table column[:key]=value...
Creates a new record in table and sets the initial
values of each column. Columns not explicitly set
will receive their default values. Outputs the UUID
of the new row.
If @name is specified, then the UUID for the new row
may be referred to by that name elsewhere in the
same \*(PN invocation in contexts where a UUID is
expected. Such references may precede or follow the
create command.
If a valid uuid is specified, then it is used as the
UUID of the new row.
Caution (ovs-vsctl as example)
Records in the Open vSwitch database are
significant only when they can be reached
directly or indirectly from the Open_vSwitch
table. Except for records in the QoS or Queue
tables, records that are not reachable from
the Open_vSwitch table are automatically
deleted from the database. This deletion
happens immediately, without waiting for
additional ovs-vsctl commands or other
database activity. Thus, a create command
must generally be accompanied by additional
commands within the same ovs-vsctl invocation
to add a chain of references to the newly
created record from the top-level
Open_vSwitch record. The EXAMPLES section
gives some examples that show how to do this.
[--if-exists] destroy table record...
Deletes each specified record from table. Unless
--if-exists is specified, each records must exist.
--all destroy table
Deletes all records from the table.
Caution (ovs-vsctl as example)
The destroy command is only useful for
records in the QoS or Queue tables. Records
in other tables are automatically deleted
from the database when they become
unreachable from the Open_vSwitch table. This
means that deleting the last reference to a
record is sufficient for deleting the record
itself. For records in these tables, destroy
is silently ignored. See the EXAMPLES section
below for more information.
wait-until table record [column[:key]=value]...
Waits until table contains a record named record
whose column equals value or, if key is specified,
whose column contains a key with the specified
value. This command supports the same operators and
semantics described for the find command above.
If no column[:key]=value arguments are given, this
command waits only until record exists. If more than
one such argument is given, the command waits until
all of them are satisfied.
Caution (ovs-vsctl as example)
Usually wait-until should be placed at the
beginning of a set of ovs-vsctl commands. For
example, wait-until bridge br0 -- get bridge
br0 datapath_id waits until a bridge named
br0 is created, then prints its datapath_id
column, whereas get bridge br0 datapath_id --
wait-until bridge br0 will abort if no bridge
named br0 exists when ovs-vsctl initially
connects to the database.
Consider specifying --timeout=0 along with
--wait-until, to prevent ovs-vsctl from terminating
after waiting only at most 5 seconds.
comment [arg]...
This command has no effect on behavior, but any
database log record created by the command will
include the command and its arguments.
OVN_SB_DAEMON
If set, this should name the Unix domain socket for an
ovn-sbctl server process. See Daemon Mode, above, for more
information.
OVN_SBCTL_OPTIONS
If set, a set of options for ovn-sbctl to apply
automatically, in the same form as on the command line.
OVN_SB_DB
If set, the default database to contact when the --db
option is not used.
0 Successful program execution.
1 Usage, syntax, or network error.
ovn-sb(5), ovn-appctl(8).
This page is part of the Open Virtual Network (Daemons for Open
vSwitch that translate virtual network configurations into
OpenFlow) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://www.ovn.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/ovn-org/ovn⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-08.) 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
OVN 24.09.90 ovn-sbctl ovn-sbctl(8)
Pages that refer to this page: ovn-detrace(1), ovsdb(7)
|
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|