mhonarc-users

Re: Adding messages to an archive

1997-03-25 09:11:03
I have been using mhonarc to maintain an archive of a few Eudora mail
folders. When I run mhonarc it can never unlock the archive. The lockfile
seems to be the culprit. I have to delete the lockfile and then mhonarc
goes on its merry way. I am running NT 3.51 with perl 5.001. I am running
mhonarc2.0b1.

I am not sure if the archive loking method works for non-Unix
platforms.  The method relies on setting file permissions to 000 on
the lock file.  This may not make sense on NT (anyone correct me who
knows about Perl on NT).

The other thing to note is that the lock file should go away after
mhonarc finishes processing.  If it does not, this implies that
mhonarc either abnormally terminated, or there is a behaviorial
problem/difference with perl 5.001 on NT.

An alternative methos is to use fcntl to do file locking.  However, I
do not know if fcntl is supported on all systems and versions of Perl
4.  Anyone know the status of fcntl, or flock, on different versions
of Perl on different OSs?  Since mhonarc will eventually require Perl
5, I am mostly curious about fcntl/flock support in Perl 5 on various
OSs.

BTW, If you are using mhonarc for batch archive updates (ie. not
updating as mail comes in, but at periodic intervals), use the -force
option.  This will cause mhonarc to process the archive, even if it
cannot obtain a lock.

        --ewh

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