maillock, mailunlock, touchlock - manage mailbox lockfiles
#include <maillock.h>
cc [ flag ... ] file ... -llockfile [
library ]
int maillock( const char *user, int retrycnt
);
void mailunlock( void );
void touchlock( void );
The
maillock function tries to create a lockfile for the users mailbox in
an NFS-safe (or resistant) way. The algorithm is documented in
lockfile_create(3).
The mailbox is typically located in
/var/mail. The name of the lockfile
then becomes
/var/mail/USERNAME.lock. If the environment variable
$MAIL is set, and it ends with the same username as the username passed
to
maillock(), then that file is taken as the mailbox to lock instead.
There is no good way to see if a lockfile is stale. Therefore if the lockfile is
older then 5 minutes, it will be removed. That is why the
touchlock
function is provided: while holding the lock, it needs to be refreshed
regulary (every minute or so) by calling
touchlock () .
Finally the
mailunlock function removes the lockfile.
maillock returns one of the following status codes:
#define L_SUCCESS 0 /* Lockfile created */
#define L_NAMELEN 1 /* Recipient name too long (> 13 chars) */
#define L_TMPLOCK 2 /* Error creating tmp lockfile */
#define L_TMPWRITE 3 /* Can't write pid int tmp lockfile */
#define L_MAXTRYS 4 /* Failed after max. number of attempts */
#define L_ERROR 5 /* Unknown error; check errno */
#define L_RMSTALE 8 /* Failed to remove stale lockfile */
These functions are not thread safe. If you need thread safe functions, or you
need to lock other mailbox (like) files that are not in the standard location,
use
lockfile_create(3) instead.
These functions call
lockfile_create(3) to do the work. That function
might spawn a set group-id executable to do the actual locking if the current
process doesn't have enough priviliges.
There are some issues with flushing the kernels attribute cache if you are using
NFS - see the
lockfile_create(3) manpage.
/var/mail/user.lock,
/usr/lib/liblockfile.so.1
Miquel van Smoorenburg
lockfile_create(3),
lockfile_touch (3),
lockfile_remove(3)