VMSOCK(9) Open VM Tools VMSOCK(9)NAME
vmsock - vmware kernel module
SYNOPSIS
modprobe vmsock
DESCRIPTION
This is a Linux kernel device driver module that provides datagram and stream socket interfaces to the underlying VMCI device. The module
implements a Linux socket family and one of the files in the module, vmci_sockets.h, provides the various constants and functions necessary
to create and, in the case of streams, connect sockets.
When the module is loaded, /dev/vsock will be created with restricted permissions. Access to /dev/vsock is required to use VMCI sockets, so
it's recommended that permissions be relaxed via a udev policy file. For reference, the VMware Tools init script changes the permissions of
/dev/vsock to 666.
Normally, issuing a socket(2) system call will automatically load the kernel module providing that socket family, but as the vsock module
is out-of-tree, there is no in-tree socket family reservation for VMCI sockets. Before sockets are created, userspace applications must
call VMCISock_GetAFValue (defined in vmci_sockets.h) which will instruct the vsock module to dynamically acquire a socket family reserva-
tion from the kernel. This function is implemented via ioctl(2) into the vsock module, so the vsock module must be manually loaded by the
user (perhaps using /etc/modules).
The vmci_sockets.h header should be installed in a system-wide location. We recommend /usr/include/vmci.
The vsock module depends on symbols from the vmci module, and so the vmci module must be loaded first.
OPTIONS
vmsock has no options.
SEE ALSO vmware-checkvm(1)vmware-hgfsclient(1)vmware-toolbox(1)vmware-toolbox-cmd(1)vmware-user(1)vmware-xferlogs(1)libguestlib(3)libvmtools(3)vmware-guestd(8)vmware-hgfsmounter(8)vmware-user-suid-wrapper(8)vmblock(9)vmci(9)vmhgfs(9)vmmemctl(9)vmsock(9)vmxnet(9)vmxnet3(9)HOMEPAGE
More information about vmsock and the Open VM Tools can be found at <http://open-vm-tools.sourceforge.net/>.
AUTHOR
Open VM Tools were written by VMware, Inc. <http://www.vmware.com/>.
This manual page was put together from homepage materials by Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-technologies.net>, for the Debian
project (but may be used by others).
2010.03.20-243334 2010-04-08 VMSOCK(9)