I used google to learn and find out about the Solaris lockfile man page.
However, I did not find the default time-out in the lockfile man page.
While it did prevent reception of mail, the lockfile disappeared
before I fully tested editing the mailbox and the mail was appended.
I did:
lockfile /var/mail/$LOGNAME.lock
vi /var/mail/$LOGNAME
some other sender:
mailx -s test $LOGNAME < /tmp/somefile
Dave
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 11:32:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dave Robbins <dave(_at_)geol(_dot_)ucsb(_dot_)edu>
To: procmail(_at_)Lists(_dot_)RWTH-Aachen(_dot_)DE
Subject: lock files (related topic)
My system is Solaris 7 with sendmail 8.9.3 (Sun's /usr/lib/sendmail
but I'm planning to go back to sendmail.com's sendmail very soon).
Recently I had to use vi to edit a mailbox that had a corrupted header
which prevented a user from downloading his mail. The proper method
to do this, it would seem, would be to first create a lock file
to prevent new mail from being lost while I was editing.
As I've seen it, the lockfile used by Sun's sendmail is called
/var/mail/.<username>.lock -- yet when I touch that file,
I can still send a message to that particular mailbox and it
is immediately appended.
My general impression is that the following sequence should be
used to manipulate e.g. my mailbox:
touch /var/mail/.dave.lock
vi /var/mail/dave
rm /var/mail/dave.lock
but this apppears to be incorrect.
Could someone please tell me the proper method to accomplish
such manipulation of a mailbox (editing or appending) without
causing mail to be lost. Thanks and sorry if this is a bit
off-topic.
Dave
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