Direct installation
Run these commands
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install openvswitch-switch
Then start the ovs deamon
sudo ovs-vswitchd
Manual installation
1. Download OpenvSwitch
Create a directory (folder) in your Desktop called ovs then download https://www.openvswitch.org/releases/openvswitch-2.5.6.tar.gz from OpenVSwitch website and save it in the ovs folder. This is important because of step 3 below.
Extract it by right clicking on it and selecting extract or run the commands below in the terminal one at a time:
cd ~/Desktop/ovs/
tar -xvf openvswitch-2.5.6.tar.gz
2. Install dependencies
OpenVSwitch requires some dependencies installed first. Run this command in the terminal:
sudo apt install build-essential fakeroot graphviz autoconf automake bzip2 debhelper dh-autoreconf libssl-dev libtool openssl procps python-all python-qt4 python-twisted-conch python-zopeinterface module-assistant dkms make libc6-dev python-argparse uuid-runtime netbase kmod python-twisted-web iproute2 ipsec-tools openvswitch-switch racoon
Confirm if all dependencies are installed. The command below should return nothing if all are installed. Otherwise it will tell you which ones are missing. This command should be run inside the openvswitch directory extracted above:
sudo dpkg-checkbuilddeps
3. Generated OpenVSwitch .deb files
You have two options, use either of the commands below depending on whether you want to run the unit tests or not.
a. Run the unit tests
sudo fakeroot debian/rules binary
b. Don't run the unit tests
sudo DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS='parallel=8 nocheck' fakeroot debian/rules binary
This will generate the following debs in the ~/Desktop
openvswitch-common_2.5.6-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-datapath-dkms_2.5.6-1_all.deb
openvswitch-datapath-source_2.5.6-1_all.deb
openvswitch-dbg_2.5.6-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-ipsec_2.5.6-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-pki_2.5.6-1_all.deb
openvswitch-switch_2.5.6-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-test_2.5.6-1_all.deb
openvswitch-testcontroller_2.5.6-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-vtep_2.5.6-1_amd64.deb
4. Install the generated deb files
The most important ones are openvswitch-common and openvswitch-switch. The rest can be installed depending on your exact needs.
cd ~/Desktop
sudo dpkg -i ../openvswitch-common_2.5.6-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i ../openvswitch-switch_2.5.6-1_amd64.deb
The openvswitch daemon called ovs-vswitchd will run automatically. You can confirm using:
ps -ef | grep ovs
Which should return such an output
ovsdb-server: monitoring pid 24477 (healthy)
ovsdb-server /etc/openvswitch/conf.db -vconsole:emer -vsyslog:err -vfile:info --remote=punix:/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock --private-key=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,private_key --certificate=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,certificate --bootstrap-ca-cert=db:Open_vSwitch,SSL,ca_cert --no-chdir --log-file=/var/log/openvswitch/ovsdb-server.log --pidfile=/var/run/openvswitch/ovsdb-server.pid --detach --monitor
ovs-vswitchd: monitoring pid 24487 (healthy)
ovs-vswitchd unix:/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock -vconsole:emer -vsyslog:err -vfile:info --mlockall --no-chdir --log-file=/var/log/openvswitch/ovs-vswitchd.log --pidfile=/var/run/openvswitch/ovs-vswitchd.pid --detach --monitor
Unless it isn't running, you can manually start it using:
sudo ovs-vswitchd
5. Documentation
This information plus the documentation can be found at http://www.openvswitch.org/support/dist-docs-2.5/
