libnbd-ocaml - how to use libnbd from OCaml
Contents
Copyright
Copyright Red Hat
Description
This manual page documents how to use libnbd to access Network Block Device (NBD) servers from the OCaml
programming language.
The OCaml bindings work very similarly to the C bindings so you should start by reading libnbd(3).
For OCaml API documentation see NBD(3).
Errors
Libnbd errors are turned automatically into exceptions of type:
NBD.Error (str, Unix.error option)
The first exception parameter is a string which is the printable error message. The second is the OCaml
"Unix.error" code, if available (see nbd_get_errno(3)).
Callbackswith"intref"errorparameter
Some callbacks take an error parameter of type "int ref", corresponding to the "int *error" passed to
those callbacks in C. See also: "Callbacks with "int *error" parameter" in libnbd(3)
If an error occurs during the callback you can update the "int" in the reference, setting it to a
C-compatibleerrno. To convert an OCaml "Unix.error" into a C-compatible errno call
"NBD.errno_of_unix_error".
Examples
This directory contains examples written in OCaml:
https://gitlab.com/nbdkit/libnbd/tree/master/ocaml/examples
Handles
Create a libnbd handle of type "NBD.t" by calling "NBD.create ()".
You can either close the handle explicitly by calling "NBD.close" or it will be closed automatically when
it is garbage collected. If you call any other method on a handle which you have explicitly closed then
the API will throw an "NBD.Closed" exception.
"NBD.with_handle" can be used to make sure the handle is closed in a timely manner. See the example in
the "SYNOPSIS" above.
License
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser
General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even
the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General
Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not,
write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
libnbd-1.22.2 2025-06-16 libnbd-ocaml(3)
Name
libnbd-ocaml - how to use libnbd from OCaml
See Also
libnbd(3), NBD(3).
Synopsis
let nbd = NBD.create () in
NBD.connect_uri nbd "nbd://localhost";
let size = NBD.get_size nbd in
printf "%Ld\n" size;
NBD.close ()
Alternate syntax which ensures that close is called even if an exception is thrown:
let size =
NBD.with_handle (
fun nbd ->
NBD.connect_uri nbd "nbd://localhost";
NBD.get_size nbd
) in
printf "%Ld\n" size
To compile:
ocamlopt -I +nbd mlnbd.cmxa prog.ml -o prog
or using findlib:
ocamlfind opt -package nbd -linkpkg prog.ml -o prog
