How to Install Open vSwitch on Fedora Linux

This document describes how to build and install Open vSwitch on a Fedora Linux host. If you want to install Open vSwitch on a generic Linux host, see [INSTALL.md] instead.

We have tested these instructions with Fedora 16 and Fedora 17.

Building Open vSwitch for Fedora

You may build from an Open vSwitch distribution tarball or from an Open vSwitch Git tree.

The default RPM build directory (_topdir) has five directories in the top-level: 1. BUILD/ Where the software is unpacked and built. 2. RPMS/ Where the newly created binary package files are written. 3. SOURCES/ Contains the original sources, patches, and icon files. 4. SPECS/ Contains the spec files for each package to be built. 5. SRPMS/ Where the newly created source package files are written.

Before you begin, note the RPM sources directory on your version of Fedora. The command "rpmbuild --showrc" will show the configuration for each of those directories. Alternatively, the command "rpm --eval '%{topdir}'" shows the current configuration for the top level directory and the command "rpm --eval '%{sourcedir}'" does the same for the sources directory. On Fedora 17, the default RPM _topdir is $HOME/rpmbuild and the default RPM sources directory is $HOME/rpmbuild/SOURCES.

  1. If you are building from a distribution tarball, skip to step 2. Otherwise, you must be building from an Open vSwitch Git tree. Create a distribution tarball from the root of the Git tree by running:

    ./boot.sh ./configure make dist

  2. Now you have a distribution tarball, named something like openvswitch-x.y.z.tar.gz. Copy this file into the RPM sources directory, e.g.:

    cp openvswitch-x.y.z.tar.gz $HOME/rpmbuild/SOURCES

  3. Make another copy of the distribution tarball in a temporary directory. Then unpack the tarball and "cd" into its root, e.g.:

    tar xzf openvswitch-x.y.z.tar.gz cd openvswitch-x.y.z

  4. To build Open vSwitch userspace, run:

    rpmbuild -bb rhel/openvswitch-fedora.spec

    This produces one RPM: "openvswitch".

    The above command automatically runs the Open vSwitch unit tests. To disable the unit tests, run:

    rpmbuild -bb --without check rhel/openvswitch-fedora.spec

  5. On Fedora 17, to build the Open vSwitch kernel module, run:

    rpmbuild -bb rhel/openvswitch-kmod-fedora.spec

    You might have to specify a kernel version and/or variants, e.g.:

    rpmbuild -bb \ -D "kversion 2.6.32-131.6.1.el6.x86_64" \ -D "kflavors default debug kdump" \ rhel/openvswitch-kmod-rhel6.spec

    This produces an "kmod-openvswitch" RPM for each kernel variant, in this example: "kmod-openvswitch", "kmod-openvswitch-debug", and "kmod-openvswitch-kdump".

Reporting Bugs

Please report problems to bugs@openvswitch.org.