Installing required NetCDF-4 Native libraries

In order to write NetCDF-4 files, you must have the NetCDF-4 C library (version 4.3.1 or above) available on your system, along with all supporting libraries (HDF5, zlib, etc). The following sections provide quick reference installation instructions. For more detailed info, please take a look at the NetCDF-4 C Library Loading page.

Windows install

  1. Download the latest NetCDF4 installer from the NetCDF-C Windows Libraries page.
  2. Install the executable
  3. Make sure to add the bin folder of the package you have extracted, to the PATH environment variable.

Linux install

  1. Download the latest required dependencies (SZIP, ZLIB, HDF5) from the NetCDF-4 libraries section.

    As an instance:
    wget ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/netcdf-4/hdf5-1.8.13.tar.gz
wget ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/netcdf/netcdf-4/zlib-1.2.8.tar.gz

  2. Download the latest NetCDF-C source code from here.

    As an instance:
    wget https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/archive/v4.3.3.1.tar.gz

  3. Build and install the required dependencies (The following instructions assume that you will install all NetCDF4 C libs on /work/libs/nc4libs, as an instance).

    1. ZLIB
      ./configure --prefix=/work/libs/nc4libs

make check install
    2. HDF5
      ./configure --with-zlib=/work/libs/nc4libs --prefix=/work/libs/nc4libs --enable-threadsafe --with-pthread=/DIR/TO/PTHREAD

make check install

  4. Build the NetCDF C Library.

    CPPFLAGS=-I/work/libs/nc4libs/include LDFLAGS=-L/work/libs/nc4libs/lib ./configure --prefix=/work/libs/nc4libs

make check install

  5. Make sure to add the lib folder of the package you have extracted, to the PATH environment variable.

GeoServer startup checks

If everything has been properly configured, you may notice a similar log message during GeoServer startup:

NetCDF-4 C library loaded (jna_path='null', libname='netcdf').
Netcdf nc_inq_libvers='4.3.1 of Jan 16 2014 15:04:00 $' isProtected=true

In case the native libraries haven’t been properly configured you will see a message like this, instead:

NetCDF-4 C library not present (jna_path='null', libname='netcdf').

Requesting a NetCDF4-Classic output file as WCS2.0 output

Specifying application/x-netcdf4 as Format, will return a NetCDF4-Classic output files, provided that the underlying libraries are available.