Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utstat!geoff
From: geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: Cnews: relaynews getting 'illegal instruction' on SparcStation 1
Message-ID: <1989Dec11.223333.12535@utstat.uucp>
Summary: standard locking rant #456B
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto
References: <4757@sater.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 89 22:33:33 GMT

Hans van Staveren:
>One minor nit: if relaynews crashes, leaving a LOCK around, it would
>be kind of nice if newsrun detected that, and would remove the LOCK.

To paraphrase our standard reply (from memory): In general, the
breakdown of a locking protocol is indicative of serious problems
requiring human attention and software should not remove apparently-dead
locks.  Programs can run for surprising lengths of time on loaded
machines and in the presence of network file systems there is in general
no way to verify that the locking process has died.
-- 
Geoff Collyer		utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu