mhonarc-users

Re: Timeout on waiting for lockfile

1999-08-10 14:42:13
On August 10, 1999 at 14:28, "Martin Bialasinski" wrote:

looks like my box is too slow for the archive size. I occasionally get 
the message, that mhonarc couldn't get the lock in time. So I guess it 
is time for th FAQ advice

  NOTE As an archive increases in size, performing updates as a
  message is received takes more processing time.  Therefore, for
  large archives, you may need to do updates through a periodic batch
  process (like via cron(8)) to avoid time-out problems from MHonArc.

Hmm, OK. But how do you do this without creating another race
condition.

The implication is that the time periods setup in a crontab would
be spaced apart enough to insure MHonArc would finish its job before
the next run.  MHonArc will still do a lock.

As for where the mail goes until cron kicks of mhonarc, you could
use Procmail (or sendmail directly) to deliver to a spool file
somewhere that mhonarc will process later.  You will need a program
that handles the addition to the spool file in a safe way (which
procmail can do).

Is cp atomic, so I can copy the interim mailbox, process it 

cp is not atomic.

with mhonarc, or will a message coming in during the cp operation be
lost, or will this cause a file corruption or such? 

Mats Dufberg provides one method to get what you want.

Another is to a qmail type delivering scheme.

        --ewh

P.S.  There are resources to control how long mhonarc waits to create
a lock: LOCKTRIES and LOCKDELAY.  Also, you may want to look into
the flock() method of locking (see LOCKMETHOD resource).  flock
method is better for dealing with abnormal mhonarc termination.

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