How to Install Open vSwitch on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ======================================================= This document describes how to build and install Open vSwitch on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) host. If you want to install Open vSwitch on a generic Linux host, see INSTALL.Linux instead. We have tested these instructions with RHEL 5.6 and RHEL 6.0. Building Open vSwitch for RHEL ------------------------------ You may build from an Open vSwitch distribution tarball or from an Open vSwitch Git tree. Before you begin, note the RPM source directory on your version of RHEL. On RHEL 5, the default RPM source directory is /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES. On RHEL 6, it is $HOME/rpmbuild/SOURCES. 1. If you are building from an Open vSwitch Git tree, then you will need to first create a distribution tarball by running "./boot.sh; ./configure; make dist" in the Git tree. 2. Copy the distribution tarball into the RPM source directory. 3. Unpack the distribution tarball into a temporary directory and "cd" into the root of the distribution tarball. 4. To build Open vSwitch userspace, run: rpmbuild -bb rhel/openvswitch.spec This produces two RPMs: "openvswitch" and "openvswitch-debuginfo". 5a. On RHEL 5, to build the Open vSwitch kernel module, copy rhel/kmodtool-openvswitch-el5.sh into the RPM source directory and run: rpmbuild -bb --target=i686-unknown-linux \ rhel/openvswitch-kmod-rhel5.spec You might have to specify a kernel version, e.g.: rpmbuild -bb -D "kversion 2.6.18-238.12.1.el5" \ --target=i686-unknown-linux \ rhel/openvswitch-kmod-rhel5.spec This produces a "kmod-openvswitch" RPM for each kernel variant, which is usually: "kmod-openvswitch", "kmod-openvswitch-xen", and "kmod-openvswitch-PAE". 5b. On RHEL 6, to build the Open vSwitch kernel module, run: rpmbuild -bb rhel/openvswitch-kmod-rhel6.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.