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NetCDF In-Memory Support

# Introduction

It can be convenient to operate on a netcdf file whose content is held in memory instead of in a disk file. The netcdf API has been modified in a number of ways to support this capability.

Actually, three distinct but related capabilities are provided.

1. DISKLESS – Read a file into memory, operate on it, and optionally write it back out to disk when nc_close() is called.

1. INMEMORY – Tell the netcdf-c library to treat a provided block of memory as if it were a netcdf file. At close, it is possible to ask for the final contents of the memory chunk. Be warned that there is some complexity to this as described below.

1. MMAP – Tell the netcdf-c library to use the mmap() operating system functionality to access a file.

The first two capabilities are intertwined in the sense that the diskless capability makes use internally of the inmemory capability (for netcdf classic only). But, the inmemory capability can be used independently of the diskless capability.

The mmap() capability provides a capability similar to diskless but using special capabilities of the underlying operating system. Note also that diskless and inmemory can be used for both netcdf-3 (classic) and netcdf-4 (enhanced) data. The mmap capability can only be used with netcdf-3.

# Enabling Diskless File Access

The diskless capability can be used relatively transparently using the NC_DISKLESS mode flag.

Note that since the file is stored in memory, size limitations apply. If you are on using a 32-bit pointer then the file size must be less than 2^32 bytes in length. On a 64-bit machine, the size must be less than 2^64 bytes.

Also note that for a diskless file, there are two notions of write with respect to the file. The first notion is that the file is writeable through the netCDF API, but on disk, the file is read-only. This means a call to, for example, nc_def_dim() will succeed, but no changes will be written to disk. The second notion of write refers to the file on disk to which the contents of memory might be persisted.

WARNING: control of the two kinds of write has changed since release 4.6.1.

The mode flag NC_WRITE determines the first kind of write. If set, then NC_WRITE means that the file can be modified through the netCDF API, otherwise it is read-only. This is a change since release 4.6.1.

The new mode flag NC_PERSIST now determines the second kind of write. If set, then NC_PERSIST means that the memory contents will be persisted to disk, possibly overwriting the previous file contents. Otherwise, the default is to throw away the in-memory contents.

## Diskless File Open

Calling nc_open() using the mode flag NC_DISKLESS will cause the file being opened to be read into memory. When calling nc_close(), the file will optionally be re-written (aka "persisted") to disk. This persist capability will be invoked if and only if NC_PERSIST is specified in the mode flags at the call to nc_open().

## Diskless File Create

Calling nc_create() using the mode flag NC_DISKLESS will cause the file to initially be created and kept in memory. When calling nc_close(), the file will be written to disk if and only if NC_PERSIST is specified in the mode flags at the call to nc_create().

# Enabling Inmemory File Access

The netcdf API has been extended to support the inmemory capability. The relevant API is defined in the file netcdf_mem.h.

The important data structure to use is NC_memio. ` typedef struct NC_memio { size_t size; void* memory; int flags; } NC_memio;

` An instance of this data structure is used when providing or retrieving a block of data. It specifies the memory and its size and also some relevant flags that define how to manage the memory.

Current only one flag is defined – NC_MEMIO_LOCKED. This tells the netcdf library that it should never try to realloc() the memory nor to free() the memory. Note that this does not mean that the memory cannot be modified, but only that the modifications will be within the confines of the provided memory. If doing such modifications is impossible without reallocating the memory, then the modification will fail.

## In-Memory API

The new API consists of the following functions. ` int nc_open_mem(const char* path, int mode, size_t size, void* memory, int* ncidp);

int nc_create_mem(const char* path, int mode, size_t initialsize, int* ncidp);

int nc_open_memio(const char* path, int mode, NC_memio* info, int* ncidp);

int nc_close_memio(int ncid, NC_memio* info);

`

## The nc_open_mem Function

The nc_open_mem() function is actually a convenience function that internally invokes nc_open_memio(). It essentially provides simple read-only access to a chunk of memory of some specified size.

## The nc_open_memio Function

This function provides a more general read/write capability with respect to a chunk of memory. It has a number of constraints and its semantics are somewhat complex. This is primarily due to limitations imposed by the underlying HDF5 library.

The constraints are as follows.

1. If the NC_MEMIO_LOCKED flag is set, then the netcdf library will make no attempt to reallocate or free the provided memory. If the caller invokes the nc_close_memio() function to retrieve the final memory block, it should be the same memory block as was provided when nc_open_memio was called. Note that it is still possible to modify the in-memory file if the NC_WRITE mode flag was set. However, failures can occur if an operation cannot complete because the memory needs to be expanded.
2. If the NC_MEMIO_LOCKED flag is not set, then the netcdf library will take control of the incoming memory. This means that the user should not make any attempt to free or even read the incoming memory block in this case. The newcdf library is free to reallocate the incoming memory block to obtain a larger block when an attempt to modify the in-memory file requires more space. Note that implicit in this is that the old block – the one originally provided – may be free'd as a side effect of re-allocating the memory using the realloc() function. The caller may invoke the nc_close_memio() function to retrieve the final memory block, which may not be the same as the originally block provided by the caller. In any case, the returned block must always be freed by the caller and the original block should not be freed.

## The nc_create_mem Function

This function allows a user to create an in-memory file, write to it, and then retrieve the final memory using nc_close_memio(). The initialsize argument to nc_create_mem() tells the library how much initial memory to allocate. Technically, this is advisory only because it may be ignored by the underlying HDF5 library. It is used, however, for netcdf-3 files.

## The nc_close_memio Function

The ordinary nc_close() function can be called to close an in-memory file. However, it is often desirable to obtain the final size and memory block for the in-memory file when that file has been modified. The nc_close_memio() function provides a means to do this. Its second argument is a pointer to an NC_memio object into which the final memory and size are stored. WARNING, the returned memory is owned by the caller and so the caller is responsible for calling free() on that returned memory.

## Support for Writing with NC_MEMIO_LOCKED

When the NC_MEMIO_LOCKED flag is set in the NC_memio object passed to nc_open_memio(), it is still possible to modify the opened in-memory file (using the NC_WRITE mode flag).

The big problem is that any changes must fit into the memory provided by the caller via the NC_memio object. This problem can be mitigated, however, by using the "trick" of overallocating the caller supplied memory. That is, if the original file is, say, 300 bytes, then it is possible to allocate, say, 65000 bytes and copy the original file into the first 300 bytes of the larger memory block. This will allow the netcdf-c library to add to the file up to that 65000 byte limit. In this way, it is possible to avoid memory reallocation while still allowing modifications to the file. You will still need to call nc_close_memio() to obtain the size of the final, modified, file.

# Enabling MMAP File Access

Some operating systems provide a capability called MMAP. This allows disk files to automatically be mapped to chunks of memory. It operates in a fashion somewhat similar to operating system virtual memory, except with respect to a file.

By setting mode flag NC_MMAP, it is possible to do the equivalent of NC_DISKLESS but using the operating system's mmap capabilities.

Currently, MMAP support is only available when using netcdf-3 or cdf5 files.

# Known Bugs

1. If you are modifying a locked memory chunk (using NC_MEMIO_LOCKED) and are accessing it as a netcdf-4 file, and you overrun the available space, then the HDF5 library will fail with a segmentation fault.

2. You will get an HDF5 error under the following conditions.

   1. You call nc_open on a file with the flags NC_DISKLESS|NC_WRITE but without NC_PERSIST.
   2. The file to be read is read-only (i.e. mode 0444).

   Note that this should be ok because the modifications to the file are not intended to pushed back into the disk file. However, the HDF5 core driver does not allow this.

# References

1. https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc1.8/Advanced/FileImageOperations/HDF5FileImageOperations.pdf

# Point of Contact

Author: Dennis Heimbigner
Email: dmh at ucar dot edu Initial Version: 2/3/2018
Last Revised: 2/5/2018