I need to create a shared library to access an in memory DB. The DB is not huge, but big enough to make it cumbersome to carry around in every single process using the shared library. Luckily, it is pretty static information, so I don't need to worry much about synchronizing the data between instances of the shared library. However, what I do need to worry about is initializing the memory once and never again.

I would love all the shared libraries to have a library scoped variable, but I don't think that's possible. If it is, let me know...but I know normally each process gets its own copy of the shared library's data segment. I don't think there is a way to flag a portion of that data segment as shared across all instances of the library.

So, I guess I'll need to have the library access the DB in shared memory. However, the first instance of the library to be started up needs to create the shared memory, attach to it, and load it all before any other possible instances can use it. How do I guarentee that this create/initialize happens once before the shared memory is used?

At first, I thought the non-existance of the shared memory segment would do it...but there exists a race condition between create and initialize where-in another instance of the library would see the shared memory but not be able to access it because it has not yet been inited. I know I can store posix mutex's in shared memory...so I guess I can use one of them. However, the other problem exists when the shared memory segment is "left over" from previous runs.

What happens then? So...all library's "detach" from the segment, but none of them destroy it. Now what...the next time the library starts fresh it should re-init the shared memory, but won't.

Hummm...any ideas? Some direction? What is the common method of providing shared memory syncronization? Should I use a system semaphore? Wouldn't it suffer from the same "warm" start problem (detached processes from shared library but memory/semaphores still resident).

This will be written for AIX 5, BTW, for those interested.