# 9.2 IO plugins

IO plugins are the ones used to wrap the open, read, write and 'system' on virtual file systems.

The cool thing of IO plugins is that you can make radare understand that any thing can be handled as a plain file. A socket connection, a remote radare session, a file, a process, a device, a gdb session, etc..

So, when radare reads a block of bytes, is the task of the IO plugin to get these bytes from any place and put them in the internal buffer.

IO plugins are selected while opening a file by its URI. Here'r some examples:

    # Debugging URIs
    $ radare dbg:///bin/ls
    $ radare pid://1927

    # Remote sessions
    $ radare listen://:9999
    $ radare connect://localhost:9999

    # Virtual buffers
    $ radare malloc://1024

You can get a list of the radare IO plugins by typing 'radare -L':

    $ radare -L
    haret       Read WCE memory ( haret://host:port )
    debug       Debugs or attach to a process ( dbg://file or pid://PID )
    gdb         Debugs/attach with gdb (gdb://file, gdb://PID, gdb://host:port)
    gdbx        GDB shell interface 'gdbx://program.exe args' )
    shm         shared memory ( shm://key )
    mmap        memory mapped device ( mmap://file )
    malloc      memory allocation ( malloc://size )
    remote      TCP IO ( listen://:port or connect://host:port )
    winedbg     Wine Debugger interface ( winedbg://program.exe )
    socket      socket stream access ( socket://host:port )
    gxemul      GxEmul Debugger interface ( gxemul://program.arm )
    posix       plain posix file access