Re: Gnus5, procmail, and reading mail lists.

["Edward J. Sabol" <sabol@thuban.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Excerpts from [ding]: (13-Nov-95) Re: Gnus5, procmail, and reading mail lists.
by Joe Hildebrand

>> "Steven" == Steven L Baur <steve@miranova.com> writes:
Steven> LOCKEXT=+
Steven> I thought movemail *did* use .lock for an extension. At least that's
Steven> what the XEmacs sources seem to imply.

>> "Joe" == Joe Hildebrand <hildjj@fuentez.com> writes:
Joe>  I got that from somewhere.... anyone want to 'fess up? I haven't lost
Joe> any mail (that I know of :) using either that or the default. Maybe I'll
Joe> go have a look at the 19.29 movemail source.

I don't know about 19.29, but 19.28 most definitely uses "foo.lock" semaphore
files for locking, and *not* "foo+". I find it hard to believe that they
would change that for 19.29. Also, in 19.28, movemail would only use
"foo.lock" semaphore files if and only MAIL_USE_LOCKF and MAIL_USE_FLOCK are
both undefined. Otherwise, it uses lockf() or flock() respectively. I advise
everyone who has "LOCKEXT=+" in his/her .procmailrc file to check the source
code for movemail and verify this. If you have procmail set to use "foo+"
semaphore files and movemail only recognizes "foo.lock" semaphore files, you
can and probably will lose e-mail at some point, unless you have
MAIL_USE_LOCKF or MAIL_USE_FLOCK defined, in which case it's a moot point
what the name of the locking semaphore file is. (Please note that you should
*not* have MAIL_USE_LOCKF or MAIL_USE_FLOCK defined if your mail spool
directory is NFS-mounted. If that's the case, then you should always use
semaphore lock files.)

Later,
Ed