Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!ira.uka.de!smurf!urlichs From: urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: 2 systems/1 spool dir Message-ID: Date: 12 Jul 90 17:07:30 GMT References: <1990Jul11.163251.19026@vicom.com> Organization: University of Karlsruhe, FRG Lines: 35 In comp.mail.uucp, article <1990Jul11.163251.19026@vicom.com>, lmb@vicom.com (Larry Blair) writes: < Has anyone tried running 2 different system's uucp with a common spool < directory? Do anyone know why it wouldn't work? < Lots of reasons, unfortunately. - The temporary lock file name is based on the process ID. Depending on how intelligent your UUCP is, this can result in a failure to execute (benign) or a failure to lock (possibly fatal). - The permanent lock file contains the process ID of the process owning the lock. Even if you could ensure a common format, which you can't, the lock will be automatically deleted if the process isn't running on the machine the lock file is checked at. - Don't forget that different UUCP implementations may have differing ideas on where to put the job files. (I know of at least four.) This affects both uux->uucico and uucico->uuxqt. Symlinks may help a lot here. Your only options are: - Machine A does uucico, Machine B does uuxqt, Machine C does uux/uucp. A, B, and C don't have to be distinct, but they must be unique, meaning that no two machines may do the same thing. (Delete the forbidden programs to make sure they won't.) - Given (a) source code and (b) an implementation of NFS which gets locking right, implement a more sensible locking scheme. (Detecting dead locks is itself a nontrivial problem.) - On the host which creates the jobs, replace uux with a shell script which executes uux on the "real" uucp machine, via rsh or similar. Likewise, create special versions of rmail and/or rnews on the uucp machine which execute the respective program on the system where they have to go. Personally, I'd recommend the latter method. -- Matthias Urlichs -- urlichs@smurf.sub.org -- urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de Humboldtstrasse 7 - 7500 Karlsruhe 1 - FRG -- +49+721+621127(Voice)/621227(PEP)