Linux Unix Socket

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Overview

A Unix domain socket or IPC socket (inter-process communication socket) is a data communications endpoint for exchanging data between processes executing on the same host operating system. Unix domain sockets support transmission of a reliable stream of bytes (SOCK_STREAM), similar to TCP. In addition, they support ordered and reliable transmission of datagrams (SOCK_SEQPACKET), or unordered and unreliable transmission of datagrams SOCK_DGRAM, similar to UDP. The Unix domain socket facility is a standard component of POSIX operating systems.

The API for Unix domain sockets is similar to that of an Internet socket, but rather than using an underlying network protocol, all communication occurs entirely within the operating system kernel. Unix domain sockets use the file system as their address name space. Processes reference Unix domain sockets as file system inodes, so two processes can communicate by opening the same socket.

unix:///var/run/docker.sock