1. Installation of ovs 2.3.1 on Debian 8.1
In this text I would like to share how I installed ovs 2.3.1. on a machine with Debian
8.1 system. To be reasonable, I wrote these following steps to show the details.
Actually I did a batch of installations of many kinds of openvswtich versions on
different operating system like Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian serials.
Finally, I called this combination, which is the briefest way I’ve even attempted. It
should be helpful to you, however, there are always some uncertainties in this magic
world like, you meet some problems that I never did or I didn’t mention here. So if
you have any question or topic and want to talk to me, please feel free to contact me.
I will leave ways at the end of this file.
So what we need now, the first is a computer running Debian 8.1 and connected to
Internet. Secondly, patience. When problems come, try to fix them. If all systems go,
let’s get moving :-)
1. Update and Upgrade. Before all these, I recommend you use the sources provided below.
vi /etc/apt/sources.list
Comment original content inside and add them below.
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free
Then start our main task.
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
2. Install those dependencies.
apt-get get install aptitude
aptitude install libssl-dev
apt-get install -y build-essential fakeroot debhelper autoconf automake bzip2 openssl
graphviz python-all procps python-qt4 python-zope.interface python-twisted-conch libtool
apt-get install uuid-runtime

2. There should no trouble in this step
3. Now we’re going to download ovs and get ready to install it.
Download from this source
wget http://openvswitch.org/releases/openvswitch-2.3.1.tar.gz
Decompress the file.
tar –zxvf openvswitch-2.3.1.tar.gz
Enter the directory
cd openvswitch-2.3.1/
Check if all dependent packages are ready
dpkg-checkbuilddeps
If nothing pops out, it means so far so good.
4. Here we will build install packages
DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS='parallel=8 nocheck' fakeroot debian/rules binary
To check those, we enter the corresponding directory
cd or cd / # either one of two places. Figure it out by yourself
ls # see the packages
openvswitch-2.3.1
openvswitch-dbg_2.3.1-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-vtep_2.3.1-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-2.3.1.tar.gz
openvswitch-ipsec_2.3.1-1_amd64.deb
python-openvswitch_2.3.1-1_all.deb
openvswitch-common_2.3.1-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-pki_2.3.1-1_all.deb
openvswitch-datapath-dkms_2.3.1-1_all.deb
openvswitch-switch_2.3.1-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-datapath-source_2.3.1-1_all.deb
openvswitch-test_2.3.1-1_all.deb

3. 5. The true installation here by the command below
dpkg -i openvswitch-common_2.3.1-1_amd64.deb
openvswitch-switch_2.3.1-1_amd64.deb
We’re supposed to finish our installation of ovs in this step.
6. After installation, let’s do some exams. Please note that all these numbers can be different
from mine. Don’t worry about that.
lsmod | grep open
openvswitch 65844 0
gre 13796 1 openvswitch
vxlan 37629 1 openvswitch
libcrc32c 12644 1 openvswitch
ovs-vsctl --version
ovs-vsctl (Open vSwitch) 2.3.1
Compiled Jul 23 2015 22:37:29
DB Schema 7.6.2
ps –ea | grep ovs
27715 ? 00:00:00 ovsdb-server
27725 ? 00:00:00 ovs-vswitchd
If you can see all these in your display, you should have a well installed openvswitch now.
Because I just want to install ovs here, I don’t plan to talk about operations of ovs like
building virtual bridge, adding port to bridge and so on. If you’re willing to, I strongly
recommend you to search related stuff on internet because it is really a good way to
learn by yourself. Hit me up if you have anything want to discuss.
Zixiong Peng
Department of EECS, College of Engineering and Computer Science
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY State
E-mail: zpeng01@syr.edu
Tel: +1 3157513252