Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!iguanodon.cis.ohio-state.edu!george
From: george@iguanodon.cis.ohio-state.edu (George M. Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: central mail server
Keywords: mail NFS
Message-ID: <23985@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 10 Oct 88 13:02:05 GMT
References: <363@asuvax.UUCP> <464@Terra.cc.brunel.ac.uk> <9449@swan.ulowell.edu> <71964@sun.uucp> <584@utkcs2.cs.utk.edu> <1431@xyzzy.UUCP>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science
Lines: 20

meissner@xyzzy.UUCP (Michael Meissner) writes:

    Some schemes (system V) put the pid in the lockfile, and use
    kill(pid,0) to determine if the locker is still there, and if not
    break the lock.  This generally can cause problems in an NFS
    environment, since pids are local to each system.

Hmmm.  Seems like one way of extending this mechanisim is to put something
like "host.org.dom:pid" in the lockfile.  This would allow machines that
share filesystems to use lock files and provide some means of being able
to find out if the process in question is still alive.  Just some random
thoughts...now, actualy getting something like this implemented in all
existing mail programs, that is another matter all together.

---George Jones
-=-
OSU Computer & Inf. Science 2036 Neil Ave.,Columbus,Ohio 43210. 614-292-7325
george@cis.ohio-state.edu or ...!osu-cis!george

Quality of life can be measured as the inverse of lawyers per thousand.