Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!psuvax1!vu-vlsi!dsinc!syd
From: syd@dsinc.UUCP (Syd Weinstein)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Elm 2.1 PL1
Summary: Flock patches
Keywords: BSD, flock, lock mail file
Message-ID: <42@dsinc.UUCP>
Date: 21 Dec 88 14:47:27 GMT
References: <39@dsinc.UUCP> <6804@techunix.BITNET>
Reply-To: syd@dsinc.UUCP (Syd Weinstein)
Organization: Datacomp Systems, Inc., Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006
Lines: 25

In article <6804@techunix.BITNET> techunix!oved@jade.berkeley.edu (Oved Ben-Aroya) writes:
>I was *very* disappointed to see that Elm2.1 PL1 still needs write
>permission in the spool mail directory, for a lock file.  Maybe that's
>ok for system V, but 4.3 bsd unix uses the flock system call.  If your
>system is bsd, you can lose new mail, or the the mailbox may get corrupted:
>Elm thinks he can re-write the mbox, and so does sendmail...

As the Elm Coordinator let me state, no one has submitted patches
for 4.3 compatibility with flock.  If the patches are not submitted
real soon, then they will not make the next version.  For whatever
reason, we had no volunteers from the user community for 'true BSD 4.3'
our BSD type people have Pyramids and Sun's, thus this is 4.2 type BSD.

I would welcome patches that fix the flock problem, but it is a two
fold problem, not just the code to do the flocks, but how do you tell,
at compile time, that you need to use the flock code for mailboxes.
I need to modify the modules used by Configure to determine to set
that flag.  Without both parts, the change is useless.

Volunteers?, send me e-mail.
-- 
=====================================================================
Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP                   Elm Coordinator
Datacomp Systems, Inc.				Voice: (215) 947-9900
{allegra,bellcore,bpa,vu-vlsi}!dsinc!syd	FAX:   (215) 938-0235