diff --git a/doc/userguide/index.rst b/doc/userguide/index.rst
index 9524ff76ab..6654f8da0b 100644
--- a/doc/userguide/index.rst
+++ b/doc/userguide/index.rst
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ Suricata User Guide
    file-extraction/file-extraction.rst
    public-data-sets
    capture-hardware/index.rst
+   unix-socket.rst
    manpages/index.rst
    acknowledgements
    licenses/index.rst
diff --git a/doc/userguide/unix-socket.rst b/doc/userguide/unix-socket.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..2a4849ddf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/userguide/unix-socket.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,229 @@
+Interacting via Unix Socket
+===========================
+
+Introduction
+------------
+
+Since 1.4 version, Suricata can listen to a unix socket and accept
+commands from the user. The exchange protocol is JSON-based and the
+format of the message has been done to be generic and it is described
+in this commit message. An example script called suricatasc is
+provided in the source and installed automatically when updating
+Suricata.
+
+The unix socket is disabled by default. 
+
+You need to have libjansson installed:
+  
+* libjansson4 - C library for encoding, decoding and manipulating JSON data
+* libjansson-dev - C library for encoding, decoding and manipulating JSON data (dev)
+* python-simplejson - simple, fast, extensible JSON encoder/decoder for Python
+  
+::
+  
+   apt-get install libjansson4 libjansson-dev python-simplejson
+
+If libjansson is present on the system , unix socket will be compiled
+in automatically - when you use "--enable-unix-socket" in your
+configure line.
+
+The creation of the socket is activated by setting enabled to yes
+under unix-command in Suricata YAML configuration file:
+  
+::
+  
+  unix-command:
+    enabled: yes
+    #filename: custom.socket # use this to specify an alternate file
+
+The ``filename`` variable can be used to set an alternate socket
+filename. The filename is always relative to the local state base
+directory.
+
+Clients are implemented for some language and can be used as code
+example to write custom scripts:
+
+* Python: https://github.com/inliniac/suricata/blob/master/scripts/suricatasc/suricatasc.in (provided with suricata and used in this document)
+* Perl: https://github.com/aflab/suricatac (a simple Perl client with interactive mode)
+* C: https://github.com/regit/SuricataC (a unix socket mode client in C without interactive mode)
+
+Commands in standard running mode
+---------------------------------
+
+
+The set of existing commands is the following:
+
+* command-list: list available commands
+* shutdown: this shutdown suricata
+* iface-list: list interfaces where Suricata is sniffing packets
+* iface-stat: list statistic for an interface
+* help: alias of command-list
+* version: display Suricata's version
+* uptime: display Suricata's uptime
+* running-mode: display running mode (workers, autofp, simple)
+* capture-mode: display capture system used
+* conf-get: get configuration item (see example below)
+* dump-counters: dump Suricata's performance counters
+
+You can access to these commands with the provided example script which
+is named ``suricatasc``. A typical session with ``suricatasc`` will looks like:
+  
+::
+  
+  # suricatasc
+  Command list: shutdown, command-list, help, version, uptime, running-mode, capture-mode, conf-get, dump-counters, iface-stat, iface-list, quit
+  >>> iface-list
+  Success: {'count': 2, 'ifaces': ['eth0', 'eth1']}
+  >>> iface-stat eth0
+  Success: {'pkts': 378, 'drop': 0, 'invalid-checksums': 0}
+  >>> conf-get unix-command.enabled
+  Success:
+  "yes"
+
+Commands on the cmd prompt
+--------------------------
+
+You can use suricatasc directly on the command prompt:
+  
+::
+
+  
+  root@debian64:~# suricatasc -c version
+  {'message': '2.1beta2 RELEASE', 'return': 'OK'}
+  root@debian64:~# 
+  root@debian64:~# suricatasc -c uptime
+  {'message': 35264, 'return': 'OK'}
+  root@debian64:~#
+
+
+**NOTE:**
+You need to quote commands involving more than one argument:
+  
+::
+
+  
+  root@debian64:~# suricatasc -c "iface-stat eth0"
+  {'message': {'pkts': 5110429, 'drop': 0, 'invalid-checksums': 0}, 'return': 'OK'}
+  root@debian64:~#
+
+
+Pcap processing mode
+--------------------
+
+This mode is one of main motivation behind this code. The idea is to
+be able to ask to Suricata to treat different pcap files without
+having to restart Suricata between the files. This provides you a huge
+gain in time as you don’t need to wait for the signature engine to
+initialize.
+
+To use this mode, start suricata with your preferred YAML file and
+provide the option ``--unix-socket`` as argument:
+  
+::
+  
+  suricata -c /etc/suricata-full-sigs.yaml --unix-socket
+
+It is also possible to specify the socket filename as argument:
+  
+::
+  
+  suricata --unix-socket=custom.socket
+
+In this last case, you will need to provide the complete path to the
+socket to ``suricatasc``. To do so, you need to pass the filename as
+first argument of ``suricatasc``:
+  
+::
+  
+  suricatasc custom.socket
+
+Once Suricata is started, you can use the provided script
+``suricatasc`` to connect to the command socket and ask for pcap
+treatment:
+  
+::
+  
+  root@tiger:~# suricatasc
+  >>> pcap-file /home/benches/file1.pcap /tmp/file1
+  Success: Successfully added file to list
+  >>> pcap-file /home/benches/file2.pcap /tmp/file2
+  Success: Successfully added file to list
+
+You can add multiple files without waiting the result: they will be
+sequentially processed and the generated log/alert files will be put
+into the directory specified as second arguments of the pcap-file
+command. You need to provide absolute path to the files and directory
+as suricata don’t know from where the script has been run.
+
+To know how much files are waiting to get processed, you can do:
+  
+::
+  
+  >>> pcap-file-number
+  Success: 3
+
+To get the list of queued files, do:
+  
+::
+  
+  >>> pcap-file-list
+  Success: {'count': 2, 'files': ['/home/benches/file1.pcap', '/home/benches/file2.pcap']}
+
+To get current processed file:
+  
+::
+  
+  >>> pcap-current
+  Success:
+  "/tmp/test.pcap"
+
+Build your own client
+---------------------
+
+The protocol is documented in the following page
+https://redmine.openinfosecfoundation.org/projects/suricata/wiki/Unix_Socket#Protocol
+
+The following session show what is send (SND) and received (RCV) by
+the server. Initial negotiation is the following:
+  
+::
+  
+  # suricatasc
+  SND: {"version": "0.1"}
+  RCV: {"return": "OK"}
+
+Once this is done, command can be issued:
+  
+::
+  
+  >>> iface-list
+  SND: {"command": "iface-list"}
+  RCV: {"message": {"count": 1, "ifaces": ["wlan0"]}, "return": "OK"}
+  Success: {'count': 1, 'ifaces': ['wlan0']}
+  >>> iface-stat wlan0
+  SND: {"command": "iface-stat", "arguments": {"iface": "wlan0"}}
+  RCV: {"message": {"pkts": 41508, "drop": 0, "invalid-checksums": 0}, "return": "OK"}
+  Success: {'pkts': 41508, 'drop': 0, 'invalid-checksums': 0}
+
+In pcap-file mode, this gives:
+  
+::
+  
+  >>> pcap-file /home/eric/git/oisf/benches/sandnet.pcap /tmp/bench
+  SND: {"command": "pcap-file", "arguments": {"output-dir": "/tmp/bench", "filename": "/home/eric/git/oisf/benches/sandnet.pcap"}}
+  RCV: {"message": "Successfully added file to list", "return": "OK"}
+  Success: Successfully added file to list
+  >>> pcap-file-number
+  SND: {"command": "pcap-file-number"}
+  RCV: {"message": 1, "return": "OK"}
+  >>> pcap-file-list
+  SND: {"command": "pcap-file-list"}
+  RCV: {"message": {"count": 1, "files": ["/home/eric/git/oisf/benches/sandnet.pcap"]}, "return": "OK"}
+  Success: {'count': 1, 'files': ['/home/eric/git/oisf/benches/sandnet.pcap']}
+
+There is one thing to be careful about: a suricata message is sent in
+multiple send operations. This result in possible incomplete read on
+client side. The worse workaround is to sleep a bit before trying a
+recv call. An other solution is to use non blocking socket and retry a
+recv if the previous one has failed. This method is used here:
+source:scripts/suricatasc/suricatasc.in#L43