VMCI(4)

📦 version 15.1, in freebsd 14.5, freebsd 15.1, nixpkgs unstable

💖 VMCI(4) — the Kernel Interfaces Manual page for vmci 💖

Okay bestie, this is the whole vibe for vmci, and we're gonna make it make sense. Periodt. 💅

✨ NAME ✨

vmci — VMware Virtual Machine Communication Interface. That's the name, and it's lowkey iconic. 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your kernel configuration file:

device vmci

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

if_vmci_load="YES"

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

Okay so the vmci driver provides support for the VMware Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI) in virtual machines by VMware. No cap. 🫶

VMCI allows virtual machines to communicate with host kernel modules and the VMware hypervisors. User level applications in a virtual machine can use VMCI through vSockets (also known as VMCI Sockets and not included in this kernel module), a socket address family designed to be compatible with UDP and TCP at the interface level. 🦋

Heads up, bestie: vSockets is not included in this kernel module — that's a whole separate thing. 🙈

Today, VMCI and vSockets are used by various VMware Tools components inside the guest for zero-config, network-less access to VMware host services. In addition to this, VMware's users are using vSockets for various applications, where network access of the virtual machine is restricted or non-existent. Examples of this are VMs communicating with device proxies for proprietary hardware running as host applications and automated testing of applications running within virtual machines. It's giving "no network, no problem." ✨

In a virtual machine, VMCI is exposed as a regular PCI device. The primary communication mechanisms supported are a point-to-point bidirectional transport based on a pair of memory-mapped queues, and asynchronous notifications in the form of datagrams and doorbells. 🔔

These features are available to kernel level components such as vSockets through the VMCI kernel API. In addition to this, the VMCI kernel API provides support for receiving events related to the state of the VMCI communication channels, and the virtual machine itself. Very main character energy. 👑

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

🌈 HISTORY 🌈

The vmci driver first appeared in FreeBSD 12.0. A whole era. ⭐

👑 AUTHORS 👑

The vmci driver and man page were written by Vishnu Dasa <vdasahar@gmail.com>. Respect the icon who wrote the icon. 💅

Catch you later, bestie — this page is from Debian, dated February 10, 2018, and it's VMCI(4) signing off. 💖✨

📦 where this page comes from