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Description of problem:

The ovs-ctl used during initialization runs lsb_release to get system's information and then push those to OVSDB.

However, the 'lsb_release' is not installed by default which 

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
2.5.90

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Remove the lsb-core package
2. Start openvswitch
3. Check the database:
   # ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-version
   # ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-type


Actual results:
OVS defaults to 'unknow':
# ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-version
unknown
# ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-type
unknown

Expected results:
OVS provides the correct information:
# ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-type
Fedora
# ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-version
"23-TwentyThree"

I dunno. lsb_release is just one of three possible methods of setting system-type and system-version, requiring lsb for what's largely optional and non-essential value seems awfully heavy.

Another option to get system-type and -version consistently and correctly populated could be teaching ovs-ctl to fish that info out of /etc/os-release which is supposed to exist on all systemd-based systems.

Patch to populate system info from os-release sent upstream:
http://openvswitch.org/pipermail/dev/2016-August/077641.html

OVS 2.6 will fix this without additional package dependencies.

Reproduced with openvswitch-2.5.0-23.git20160727.el7fdb.x86_64

[root@dell-per730-05 ~]# rpm -q openvswitch
openvswitch-2.5.0-23.git20160727.el7fdb.x86_64
[root@dell-per730-05 ~]# ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-version
unknown
[root@dell-per730-05 ~]# ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-type
unknown
[root@dell-per730-05 ~]# 


Verified with openvswitch-2.6.1-2.git20161206.el7fdb.x86_64

[root@dell-per730-05 ~]# rpm -q openvswitch
openvswitch-2.6.1-2.git20161206.el7fdb.x86_64
[root@dell-per730-05 ~]# ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-version
"7.3"
[root@dell-per730-05 ~]# ovs-vsctl get Open_vSwitch . system-type
rhel
[root@dell-per730-05 ~]#