interfaces not brought up when ovs is started

[ben thielsen]

when ovs is started [e.g. systemctl start openvswitch-switch.service], the services [ovsdb-server and ovs-vswitchd] are started, but no interfaces are brought up. running ifup --allow=ovs br0 manually after ovs starts does bring up the interfaces.

>cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# bridge
#auto br0
allow-ovs br0
iface br0 inet manual
 ovs_type OVSBridge
 ovs_ports eth0 br0-host

# physical interface
#auto eth0
allow-br0 eth0
iface eth0 inet manual
 ovs_type OVSPort
 ovs_bridge br0

# internal interface [host os]
allow-br0 br0-host
iface br0-host inet static
 ovs_type OVSIntPort
 ovs_bridge br0
 ovs_options tag=681
 address 10.68.40.120/17
 gateway 10.68.60.1

additionally, stopping ovs stops the services, but the interfaces remain.

1] >lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 15.04
Release: 15.04

2] >apt-cache policy openvswitch-switch
openvswitch-switch:
  Installed: 2.3.1-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 2.3.1-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 2.3.1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

3] i expected the configured interfaces to be brought up
4] they were not

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[James Page (james-page)]

I remember something like this in older ovs versions where the ifup was called by the init script; however that appears to have been dropped at some point in time both in Ubuntu and upstream in OVS as well.

I think that a manual ifup is required after installation of ovs - this will hook into the ovs supplied ifupdown scripts that manage the interfaces (and also start OVS if its not started - that might be the reason why it was dropped from the init/systemd/upstart scripts).

[James Page (james-page)]

Marking this as Won't Fix, as I think things are working as designed, with loose coupling from ifupdown -> ovs rather than the other way around.