Remove openvswitch run-time version checks

Launchpad blueprint:

The current method of checking openvswitch and kernel versions for specific feature support is brittle, distro-specific and unsupportable.

Problem description

When VXLAN tunnels are enabled, openvswitch-using agents call ovs_lib code to check that the installed kernel and openvswitch versions are greater than a minimum specified version. Due to distro-specific differences in 1) the fields returned by modinfo and 2) the minimum required version due to the practice of backporting, this run-time checking method fails.

In addition to VXLAN, other specific openvswitch features will need to be tested for in the future. As the number of features and versions and distros grows, checking version numbers becomes increasingly unsustainable and should not be done at agent start, but instead at package installation or deployment.

Proposed change

Trying to test features by version numbers across multiple distros is a fool’s errand. It is much better to leave dependency management to the distros and packaging as they are the only ones who really know what version dependencies exist in their environment. The run-time checks should be completely removed from ovs_lib and the agents.

If an attempt is made to use a specific openvswitch feature fails, a helpful error message suggesting that updating openvswitch may resolve the issue should be logged.

To help deployment tools, a script will be created that attempts to use specific openvswitch features and exits 0 for success and 1 for failure. This way a deployment can be aborted, e.g. in devstack, if the feature is enabled but not available in the current openvswitch/kernel versions without trying to keep track of version numbers or incurring a messy run-time feature check at agent start.


Openvswitch does not have the ability to query whether it supports certain features, so the only way to reliably test whether a feature exists at runtime is to try to use the feature and see if it works. It would be possible, but unacceptably messy, to attempt to use all required OVS features at agent start and exit the agent on failure. Dependency management should be handled at packaging and/or deployment and not checked every time an agent is started by modifying system state.

Data model impact


REST API impact


Security impact


Notifications impact


Other end user impact


Performance Impact

Negligible improvement in openvswitch-using agents due to removal of checks.

Other deployer impact

Existing deployments will be unaffected as they will already have the appropriate dependencies for their deployment.

Deployments using distro packaging will be unaffected as the dependencies will already be handled by the packaging.

Source installs, e.g. devstack, should run the feature test script to verify that an appropriate version of openvswitch has been installed on the system.

Developer impact

Agents using openvswitch will no longer need to check openvswitch versions when using version-specific openvswitch features. Testing is simplified since the version-check feature is being removed and no longer requires testing.

Devstack can also be modified to run the external feature test script before deployment and fail early in the case of a configuration/dependency mismatch.



Primary assignee:


Work Items

  • Remove runtime version checks and associated tests

  • Create the feature test script

This will essentially be a refactoring of:

into two pieces, the runtime check -> separate script and the existing code removal in that patch.




As this implementation primarily removes code that should not exist, it also removes the need for testing the version checking code.

Documentation Impact