Bug#43651: ACCEPTED] mailbox locking
Any progress on this, by any chance? There was a suggested
implementation in the bug report; should that go in policy as a
footnote?
Julian
> On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Julian Gilbey wrote:
>
> > I am about to include this amendment in policy. However, I am stuck
> > with the wording, as you say the following.
> >
> > Questions: What version number should be used in footnote 2?
> > What do we do with the reference implementation?
>
> Good question. I didn't hear from Miquel van Smoorenburg (the
> maintainer of liblockfile) since 1999-09-21. In his last mail he
> thought about different way how to implement the changed the behavior
> in liblockfile (by completely changing the API or by leaving the
> fcntl() part to the calling program).
>
> > > So I think we should change the above paragraph to something which
> > > explicitly says, how locking has to be implemented:
> > >
> > > All Debian MUAs, MTAs, MDAs and other mailbox accessing programs
> > > (like IMAP daemons) have to lock the mailbox in a NFS-safe way.
> > > This means that fcntl() locking has to be combined with dot
> > > locking. To avoid dead locks, a program has to use fcntl() first
> > > and dot locking after this or alternatively implement the two
> > > locking methods in a non blocking way[1]. Using the functions
> > > `maillock' and `mailunlock' provided by the `liblockfile*'[2]
> > > packages is the recommended way to realize this.
> > >
> > > Footnotes:
> > > [1] If it is not possible to establish both locks, the system
> > > shouldn't wait for the second lock to be established, but
> > > remove the first lock, wait a (random) time, and start over
> > > locking again.
> > > [2] liblockfile version >= .... (fill in a version number here,
> > > which implements the above noted non blocking mechanism
> > > without blocking).
>
> Maybe we should say "liblockfile version >> 1.01" until there is no
> new version available yet?
>
> Miquel, what are you thinking about this?
>
> Ciao
>
> Roland
>
> --
> * roland@spinnaker.de * http://www.spinnaker.de/ *
>
>
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
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