gimel

Package gimel provides functionality for in-memory execution on Linux. It can also load arbitrary files into memory, which (in certain cases) can be shared with other Linux processes via file path or by passing the file descriptor via exec.

This library is based on example code by @magisterquis. Please give their excellent blog post on the subject a read.

APIs

memfd_create(2) wrappers

The memfd_create(2) system call copies data into memory. The library offers several functions for executing the system call:

• MemfdCreate() - Executes memfd_create(2), returning a file descriptor representing the in-memory file
• MemfdCreateOSFile() - Executes memfd_create(2), returning a *os.File representing the in-memory file
• MemfdCreateFromExe() - Executes memfd_create(2) and copies the specified executable into the in-memory file, returning a *os.File and *exec.Cmd
• MemfdCreateFromFile() - Executes memfd_create(2) and copies the specified file into the in-memory file, returning a *os.File
• MemfdCreateFromReader() - Executes memfd_create(2) and copies the contents of the specified io.Reader into the in-memory file, returning a *os.File

Helper functions

Several helper functions are also available:

• InMemoryFileToCmd() - Converts an existing *os.File into a *exec.Cmd
• CopyDataIntoMemFile() - Copies the contents of an io.ReadCloser into the specified *os.File and closes the io.ReadCloser

Examples

The following examples can be found in the examples/ directory:

• examples/runonce/ - Run an application from memory only one time
• examples/multirun/ - Run an application from memory several times in a row, reusing the existing in-memory file
• examples/sharefile/ - Load an arbitrary file into memory, print its "/proc" file path so that other programs can access it using the file path