> With lockd running, then, is it possible to lock a nfs mounted file > using 'fcntl', 'lockf', or 'flock', without the 'lockfile' kluge? No. With lockd running it's possible to *try* to lock a file. It doesn't actually work. On some systems, you can lock a file that way, but you can't then unlock it :-) Stick with lockfiles, they're close to actually working (not in general, but I think in this particular case they work.)