Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pacbell!david
From: david@pacbell.PacBell.COM (David St.Pierre)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm,pb.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Lock file 'problem' between ELM and mailx
Message-ID: <576@pacbell.PacBell.COM>
Date: 30 Jan 89 06:55:36 GMT
References: <4602@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Reply-To: david@pacbell.PacBell.COM (David St.Pierre)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 25

In article <4602@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo) writes:
>
[mailx -e bug noticed]
>
>They never noticed the problem before, because they were using mailx,
>and mailx would remove the lock file after the requisite number of tries.

/bin/mail also removes it if the contents are non-numeric or (numeric and
the process no longer exists). We have experienced problems with mail .lock
files hanging around and preventing people from logging in again. If some
mail programs put a numeric like "1" in the lockfile, that would cause a lot
of problems.

>Two possible solutions. Don't use mailx -e, but rather mail -e, or
>configure ELM to remove the lock file after the requisite number of
>tries. I recommend the former and not the latter.

We should have mailx fixed on the 3b20s by Monday (the problem is in
setfile()) but other systems should heed Rob's recommendation - the 
mailx -e option is broken in SV_R3.0.



-- 
David St. Pierre 415/823-6800 {att,bellcore,sun,ames,pyramid}!pacbell!david