fetchmail as cronjob + gnus -- safe?

fetchmail as cronjob + gnus -- safe?

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

For a couple of days now, I call fetchmail in regular intervals for
fetching mail and writing it to my unix mailbox (in
/var/mail/bronger I think).  Gnus is supposed to read from there.

Theoretically it is possible that both actions happen at the same
time.  Is this dangerous, or is some locking mechanism used to do it
safely?

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus

Re: fetchmail as cronjob + gnus -- safe?

[Charles philip Chan]

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On 17 Aug 2005, bronger@physik.rwth-aachen.de wrote:

> Theoretically it is possible that both actions happen at the same
> time.  Is this dangerous, or is some locking mechanism used to do it
> safely?

I have been doing this for many years with no problems at all. After all
this is what fetchmail was designed for.

Charles

-- 
"Linux: the operating system with a CLUE...
Command Line User Environment".
(seen in a posting in comp.software.testing)

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Re: fetchmail as cronjob + gnus -- safe?

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

"Charles philip Chan" <cpchan@sympatico.ca> writes:

> On 17 Aug 2005, bronger@physik.rwth-aachen.de wrote:
>
>> Theoretically it is possible that both actions happen at the same
>> time.  Is this dangerous, or is some locking mechanism used to do
>> it safely?
>
> I have been doing this for many years with no problems at all.

So far, I called fetchmail from Gnus, and Gnus waited for fetchmail
to complete.

> After all this is what fetchmail was designed for.

Yes, but I wasn't sure how *Gnus* reads from the mailbox and empties
it.

Two years ago, I had real concurrency problems with the tool chain
explained in the Gnus manual: It meant to read from
/var/mail/bronger directly, calling Spamassassin, and writing back
to /var/mail/bronger.  Meanwhile sendmail had appended further
emails to the file and bang! they went lost.

Once bitten, twice shy, so I'm keen to know whether Gnus is
explicitly concurrency safe in this respect.  So far it needn't be
on my system.

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus

Re: fetchmail as cronjob + gnus -- safe?

[Johan Bockgård]

Torsten Bronger <bronger@physik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:

> Yes, but I wasn't sure how *Gnus* reads from the mailbox and empties
> it.

It uses the `movemail' program.

-- 
Johan Bockgård