Re: Pre2.0-8 & Sendmail

John Henders (jhenders@stdismas.bogon.com)
30 May 1996 14:41:37 -0700


In <9605290611.AA26813@lysaker.kvaerner.no> andy@lysaker.kvaerner.no (Andrew Walker) writes:

>Recompile your sendmail to lock with flock() (#define HASFLOCK I think).
>In newer kernels I disallowed mixing BSD (flock) and SYSV(lockf)/POSIX(fcntl)
>locks on a file. The GDBM routines use flock() to lock the alias database,
>and then sendmail tries to lock the same files with lockf() - hence the
>problem.

You might want to reconsider your recommendation for flock() as the
standard. I agree that mixed locks are a bad thing, but standardizing on
flock means anyone wanting to try doing locking over NFS will have to
maintain custom versions of the system libraries. Debian has already
changed their gdbm to use fcntl() locking.

Is there any particular reason to recommending flock()? My book on Posix
programming uses fcntl() and calls flock() a BSD'ism.

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