Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!ericom!eua.ericsson.se!erix.ericsson.se!per
From: per@erix.ericsson.se (Per Hedeland)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Limiting Simultaneous 'uuxqts' on Pre-HDB UUCP
Message-ID: <1990Oct19.121250.22003@eua.ericsson.se>
Date: 19 Oct 90 12:12:50 GMT
References: <1820@fallst.UUCP> <s872007.655997255@otto> <2588@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca>
Sender: news@eua.ericsson.se
Reply-To: per@erix.ericsson.se (Per Hedeland)
Organization: Ellemtel Telecom Systems Labs, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 65

In article <2588@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca>, jtc@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca (J.T. Conklin) writes:
|> A problem I have observed is that pre-HDB SCO uuxqt erroneously
|> considers the lock file stale if it is "too" old and starts anyway.
|> This is likely to happen if you are processing a lot of compressed
|> news.

This problem is certainly not unique to SCO's uuxqt...

|> The way I solved the problem was to recompile bnews with SPOOLNEWS
|> defined in defs.h.

This is probably the best solution, but in case you prefer not to do it for
some reason or other, here is a script I hacked together for SunOS 3.x/4.0[.x]
- it may well work for other systems, perhaps with some tweaking; a necessary
requirement is that the uucp programs store the process ID of the locker in
the lock file. Btw, it will also help with long-running uucicos, where a
corresponding problem can occur. Run from crontab with an interval shorter
than the "stale" time (e.g. half-hourly).

Regards
--Per Hedeland
per@erix.ericsson.se  or
per%erix.ericsson.se@uunet.uu.net  or
...uunet!erix.ericsson.se!per

uulckchk--------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
# Update the mod, access, and change times (using touch(1)) of all uucp 
# lock files that still are valid (i.e. the process that created the file
# is still active). This is a workaround for primitive uucp's that just 
# check the age of the lock file rather than checking for the process 
# when determining validity.
#
# Where the lock files live
LCKDIR=/usr/spool/uucp

cd $LCKDIR
set LCK.*
if [ "$1" = "LCK.*" ]
then
	# No lock files found
	exit 0
fi
for file
do
	if [ -r "$file" ]
	then
		pid=`od -l $file | awk '$1~/0$/{print $2}'`
		if [ "$pid" != "" ]
		then
			# SunOS 3.2 kill(1) doesn't give a meaningful exit code
			# - we rely on ps (undocumented, but present in SunOS
			# 3.2 & 4.0, BSD 4.3) instead...
			#if kill -0 $pid >/dev/null 2>&1
			if ps $pid >/dev/null 2>&1
			then
				# Mustn't recreate the file if it went away
				# while weren't looking; hence -c
				touch -c $file >/dev/null 2>&1
			fi
		fi
	fi
done

exit 0