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When I used the netstat -a command to check for active connections, I encountered this entry under active unix domains sockets(servers and established)

Proto  Refcnt  Flags        Type      State        I-node              Path
unix    2      [ ]         DGRAM                    32773    @@@@2@@��@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

I am new to networking. What is implied by this?

ddehhiorrty
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    Are you using Ubuntu? – Pilot6 Jun 03 '20 at 16:08
  • Yes. Ubuntu 20.04 – ddehhiorrty Jun 03 '20 at 16:10
  • It seems to be related to GPU. Let's wait that someone explains it. Upvoted. – Pilot6 Jun 03 '20 at 16:12
  • Here is the output of `netstat -a | grep -e Path -e '@@@@'` command in my Ubuntu 20.04 notebook: ```Proto RefCnt Flags Type State I-Node Path unix 5 [ ] DGRAM 47263 @var/run/nvidia-xdriver-24776835@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ unix 3 [ ] DGRAM 29074 @var/run/nvidia-xdriver-cd91bb22@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ ``` – FedKad Jun 03 '20 at 16:24
  • Can you pipe the output *of the relevant* line to `| hd` so we can see the details of these strange characters? – FedKad Jun 03 '20 at 16:27
  • @FedonKadifeli I typed the command you provided and all I get is `Binary File(Standard Input) matches`. – ddehhiorrty Jun 03 '20 at 16:33
  • Something like this: `netstat -a | grep -e '@@@@' | hd` ? – FedKad Jun 03 '20 at 16:40
  • @FedonKadifeli Here is the ouput: `00000000 42 69 6e 61 72 79 20 66 69 6c 65 20 28 73 74 61 |Binary file (sta| 00000010 6e 64 61 72 64 20 69 6e 70 75 74 29 20 6d 61 74 |ndard input) mat| 00000020 63 68 65 73 0a |ches.| 00000025` – ddehhiorrty Jun 03 '20 at 16:45
  • Something is badly wrong with `netstat` or the network stack in your system. Does this persist reboots? I upvoted your question too... – FedKad Jun 03 '20 at 16:48
  • I just rebooted. It still exists. With a different I-node value and a 6 instead of 2 in the path. – ddehhiorrty Jun 03 '20 at 16:58

1 Answers1

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I also had that path in my netstat output.

As it turns out it apparently belongs to uml_switch, which appears to be a program to assist with network access from user-mode Linux.

The program is being called with the following cmdline:

/usr/bin/uml_switch -unix /var/run/uml-utilities/uml_switch.ctl

I'm not sure if that's actually something to be concerned about. Howewver I did build user-mode Linux and I can imagine that simply to be a bug that not many people encountered.

I simply used:

sudo lsof | grep INODE

with INODE being the value associated to that string that has been encountered with netstat.

That being said if you installed it via apt, you can probably remove it with

sudo apt remove uml-utilities
The19thFighter
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