Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Cnews locking -- stale ones
Message-ID: <1991Apr19.154804.15684@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1991 15:48:04 GMT
References: <PETE.91Apr18203829@fidata.fi>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <PETE.91Apr18203829@fidata.fi> pete@fidata.fi writes:
>  Is it:
>A) already implemented
>B) planned to be implemented
>  that C-news software be capable of removing stale locks on the fly?

Neither.  This is documented in doc/interface and notebook/bdiffs.  Failure
of a locking protocol indicates that something is badly wrong.  Blindly
removing the lock and charging onward can be a terrible mistake.  We prefer
to alert the administrator (via "newswatch") and let him sort it out.

A side issue here is that one reason for having a lock persist for a long
time is that the administrator is working on the news system.

>It should check the existence of the lock owner process...

There is no portable way to do this.  Especially in the presence of
network file systems.

>our upstream site gets stale locks from time to time and this cuts our
>newsfeed quite badly.

They need to investigate *why* they are getting stale locks.  C News does
not do that.  Something is wrong.
-- 
And the bean-counter replied,           | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
"beans are more important".             |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
