Unix domain socket

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A Unix domain socket (UDS) or IPC socket (inter-process communication socket) is a virtual socket, similar to an internet socket that is used in POSIX operating systems for inter-process communication. The correct standard POSIX term is POSIX Local IPC Sockets.

These connections appear as byte streams, much like network connections, but all data remains within the local computer. UNIX domain sockets use the file system as the address name space, i.e they use files to communicate.

In addition to sending data, processes can send file descriptors across a Unix domain socket connection using the sendmsg() and recvmsg() system calls.

[edit] External links

• socketpair(2): create a pair of connected sockets – Linux man page
• sendmsg(2): send a message on a socket – Linux man page
• recvmsg(2): receive a message from a socket – Linux man page
• cmsg(3): socket ancillary data, including sending/receiving file descriptors – Linux man page
• ucspi-unix, UNIX-domain socket client-server command-line tools
• unix domain sockets
• Unix sockets vs Internet sockets