1 How to Install Open vSwitch on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 =======================================================
4 This document describes how to build and install Open vSwitch on a Red
5 Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) host. If you want to install Open vSwitch
6 on a generic Linux host, see INSTALL instead.
8 We have tested these instructions with RHEL 5.6 and RHEL 6.0.
10 Building Open vSwitch for RHEL
11 ------------------------------
13 You may build from an Open vSwitch distribution tarball or from an
14 Open vSwitch Git tree.
16 The default RPM build directory (_topdir) has five directories in
18 1. BUILD/ Where the software is unpacked and built.
19 2. RPMS/ Where the newly created binary package files are written.
20 3. SOURCES/ Contains the original sources, patches, and icon files.
21 4. SPECS/ Contains the spec files for each package to be built.
22 5. SRPMS/ Where the newly created source package files are written.
24 Before you begin, note the RPM sources directory on your version of
25 RHEL. The command "rpmbuild --showrc" will show the configuration
26 for each of those directories. Alternatively, the command "rpm --eval
27 '%{_topdir}'" shows the current configuration for the top level
28 directory and the command "rpm --eval '%{_sourcedir}'" does the same
29 for the sources directory. On RHEL 5, the default RPM _topdir is
30 /usr/src/redhat and the default RPM sources directory is
31 /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES. On RHEL 6, the default _topdir is
32 $HOME/rpmbuild and the default RPM sources directory is
33 $HOME/rpmbuild/SOURCES.
35 1. If you are building from a distribution tarball, proceed to step 2.
36 Otherwise, if you are building from an Open vSwitch Git tree,
37 determine the version of Autoconf available in the RHEL version you
38 are using. If it is not at least version 2.63, then you have two
41 a. Install Autoconf 2.63 or later, one way or another.
43 b. Create a distribution tarball on some other machine, by
44 running "./boot.sh; ./configure; make dist" in the Git tree.
45 You must run this on a machine that has the tools listed in
46 INSTALL as prerequisites for building from a Git tree.
47 Afterward, proceed with the rest of the instructions using the
50 2. Install build prerequisites:
52 yum install gcc make python-devel openssl-devel kernel-devel graphviz \
53 kernel-debug-devel autoconf automake rpm-build redhat-rpm-config \
56 3. Some versions of the RHEL 6 kernel-devel package contain a broken
57 "build" symlink. If you are using such a version, you must fix
58 the problem before continuing.
60 To find out whether you are affected, run:
62 cd /lib/modules/<version>
65 where <version> is the version number of the RHEL 6 kernel. (The
66 trailing slash in the final command is important. Be sure to include
67 it.) If the "ls" command produces a directory listing, your
68 kernel-devel package is OK. If it produces a "No such file or
69 directory" error, your kernel-devel package is buggy.
71 If your kernel-devel package is buggy, then you can fix it with:
73 cd /lib/modules/<version>
75 ln -s /usr/src/kernels/<target> build
77 where <target> is the name of an existing directory under
78 /usr/src/kernels, whose name should be similar to <version> but may
79 contain some extra parts. Once you have done this, verify the fix with
80 the same procedure you used above to check for the problem.
82 4. If you are building from an Open vSwitch Git tree, then you will
83 need to first create a distribution tarball by running "./boot.sh;
84 ./configure; make dist" in the Git tree.
86 5. Copy the distribution tarball into the RPM sources directory.
88 6. Unpack the distribution tarball into a temporary directory and "cd"
89 into the root of the distribution tarball.
91 7. To build Open vSwitch userspace, run:
93 rpmbuild -bb rhel/openvswitch.spec
95 This produces two RPMs: "openvswitch" and "openvswitch-debuginfo".
97 The above command automatically runs the Open vSwitch unit tests.
98 To disable the unit tests, run:
100 rpmbuild -bb --without check rhel/openvswitch.spec
102 If the build fails with "configure: error: source dir
103 /lib/modules/2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64/build doesn't exist" or similar,
104 then the kernel-devel package is missing or buggy. Go back to step
105 1 or 2 and fix the problem.
107 8. On RHEL 6, to build the Open vSwitch kernel module, copy
108 rhel/openvswitch-kmod.files into the RPM sources directory and run:
110 rpmbuild -bb rhel/openvswitch-kmod-rhel6.spec
112 You might have to specify a kernel version and/or variants, e.g.:
115 -D "kversion 2.6.32-131.6.1.el6.x86_64" \
116 -D "kflavors default debug kdump" \
117 rhel/openvswitch-kmod-rhel6.spec
119 This produces an "kmod-openvswitch" RPM for each kernel variant,
120 in this example: "kmod-openvswitch", "kmod-openvswitch-debug", and
121 "kmod-openvswitch-kdump".
123 A RHEL host has default firewall rules that prevent any Open vSwitch tunnel
124 traffic from passing through. If a user configures Open vSwitch tunnels like
125 Geneve, GRE, VXLAN, LISP etc., they will either have to manually add iptables
126 firewall rules to allow the tunnel traffic or add it through a startup script
127 (Please refer to the "enable-protocol" command in the ovs-ctl(8) manpage).
129 Red Hat Network Scripts Integration
130 -----------------------------------
132 Simple integration with Red Hat network scripts has been implemented.
133 Please read rhel/README.RHEL in the source tree or
134 /usr/share/doc/openvswitch/README.RHEL in the installed openvswitch
140 Please report problems to bugs@openvswitch.org.