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From: mb@ttidca.TTI.COM (Michael Bloom)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Elm for 4.3BSD?
Message-ID: <1355@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: Thu, 15-Oct-87 13:46:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: ttidca.1355
Posted: Thu Oct 15 13:46:12 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Oct-87 23:26:42 EDT
Reply-To: mb@ttidca.UUCP (Michael Bloom)
Organization: Citicorp/TTI, Santa Monica
Lines: 21
Keywords: Elm 1.7 flock
Summary: elm uses lock files instead of flock(2)

Has anyone modified ELM to use flock(2) instead of lock files?  I have
elm running on my home 4.2 system (and it's a pretty nice mail agent),
but can't safely install it on the 4.3 systems at work.

Why? Because 4.3 uses flock instead of lock files for mail file
locking and replacing the file locking code in elm does not look
trivial from what I've seen.  the locking code in elm is scattered and
is used on files that are closed in some places, open in others.
flock only works on open file descriptors, and the combinations of
locking via lock files, opens and closes in the elm code do not lend
themselves to simple replacement with flock style locking.

Has anyone already made elm use flock?  If so, please post your mods,
as this one facet of elm may be preventing it from being used at many
more sites than just my own.

If not, I'll probably get around to making the changes myself, but it
looks like it will involve reorganization of quite a bit of code, and
I just don't have the time for that right now.

- Michael Bloom (mb@ttidca.tti.com)