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Re: NFS locking



In article <Pine.3.89.9610141516.B21426-0100000@katric1>,
Ricardo Kleemann  <ricardo@americasnet.com> wrote:
>Does 2.0.x have NFS file locking working yet? Mainly for the purpose of 
>exporting /var/spool/mail...
>
>AFAIK file locking over NFS is still an issue in Linux... true?

Alas, yes. All Debian mail programs follow (or have to follow) the
convention that a user.lock file is used (dotlocking) instead of
fcntl/lockf, so that sharing a mailspool over NFS works. However all
programs except procmail use O_EXCL to create that file, which
does not work over NFS (bummer). The right way is to create a temp
file and link(2) that to the lockfile - that's guaranteed atomic,
even over NFS.

>On the same note, supposing that NFS locking works fine in FreeBSD, would 
>that be "erased" if exporting to a linux box? (Exporting from linux 
>wouldn't work since the NFS locking in linux doesn't work; but would 
>exporting *to* linux work?)

If you fix all MTAs and MUAs to use dotfile locking with link(2) there
wouldn't be a problem.. And no, neither client-side or server side of
lockd works in Linux (yet).

Mike.
-- 
   Miquel van      | Cistron Internet Services   --    Alphen aan den Rijn.
   Smoorenburg,    | mailto:info@cistron.nl          http://www.cistron.nl/
miquels@cistron.nl |           The truth is out there. 42.

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