Bug#1127478: network-manager: Enable Open vSwitch (OVS) plugin

[Michael Biebl]

[I'm looping in the openvswitch maintainer here]

Am 23.02.26 um 10:33 schrieb Enrique Llorente Pastora:

On Sun, Feb 22, 2026 at 11:08 AM Michael Biebl <bi...@debian.org <mailto:bi...@debian.org>> wrote:

    Hi Enrique

    On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 14:21:34 +0100 Enrique Llorente Pastora
    <ellor...@redhat.com <mailto:ellor...@redhat.com>> wrote:
     > Package: network-manager
     > Version: 1.54.3-1
     > Severity: wishlist
     >
     > The Open vSwitch (OVS) plugin is currently disabled in the Debian
     > network-manager build [1][2]. The use case we have is using
     > NetworkManager with OVS as part of Kubernetes KIND clusters this way
     > users can use kubernetes-nmstate [3] to configure cluster networking.
     >
     > I think the build change is minimal — it requires passing the
    appropriate
     > configure flag to enable OVS support during package build.
    I've pushed some preliminary changes to the feature/ovs branch. See

    https://salsa.debian.org/utopia-team/network-manager/-/commit/
    c6c1f1ad5e15e6c712f8cc2a9c7aee4eefa2b1ee <https://salsa.debian.org/
    utopia-team/network-manager/-/commit/
    c6c1f1ad5e15e6c712f8cc2a9c7aee4eefa2b1ee>

    Enabling ovs support results in a drop-in file being installed:
    /usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service.d/NetworkManager-ovs.conf
    which changes the ordering of NetworkManager.service.

    So splitting of the ovs plugin related files into a dedicated package
    seemed like the way to go.

    Then again, I looked into NetworkManager-ovs.conf, which contains:

    [Unit]
    After=openvswitch.service


    In Debian, there is no package openvswitch.service though:

    $ apt-file search -x "/usr/lib/systemd/system/openvswitch*"
    openvswitch-ipsec: /usr/lib/systemd/system/openvswitch-ipsec.service
    openvswitch-switch: /usr/lib/systemd/system/openvswitch-switch.service


    Any thoughts here?





"After=openvswitch.service" to "After=openvswitch-switch.service"

As I understand this is needed to make NetworkManager service depend on the openvswitch unit running, since it does not make sense to configure ovs using NetworkManger if ovs itself is not working. since the debian version of the unit is named differently "openvswitch- switch" the package should rename

Any particular reason you chose a different name?

I think there is value in that as it avoids unnecessary friction.



Thoughts?

Michael

Thomas, are you aware, that the .service files are named differently in Debian and upstream/RHEL? I.e. ./rhel/usr_lib_systemd_system_openvswitch.service vs ./debian/openvswitch-switch.service Could you be convinced to rename openvswitch-switch.service to openvswitch.service to align it with other distros? A static symlink openvswitch.service → openvswitch-switch.service shipped by the openvswitch-switch would be another option.

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