[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] 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 <biebl at debian.org 
> <mailto:biebl at debian.org>> wrote:
> 
>     Hi Enrique
> 
>     On Mon, 9 Feb 2026 14:21:34 +0100 Enrique Llorente Pastora
>     <ellorent at redhat.com <mailto:ellorent at 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?
> 
> 
> 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
> "After=openvswitch.service" to "After=openvswitch-switch.service"
> 

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

Any particular reason you chose a different name?
Could you be convinced to rename openvswitch-switch.service to 
openvswitch.service to align it with other distros?
I think there is value in that as it avoids unnecessary friction.

A static symlink openvswitch.service → openvswitch-switch.service 
shipped by the openvswitch-switch would be another option.

Thoughts?

Michael


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