Re: [Mailman-Users] weird locking problems

anyway the problem is that there are lock files, which don't have a date or time on them. if i create files in that directory, they have a date / time as they should, but the lock files look like: -rw-rw-r-- 2 list list 41 Mar 29 2002 adm.lock -rw-rw-r-- 2 list list 41 Mar 29 2002 adm.lock.ladd.9136 -rw-rw-r-- 1 list list 41 Mar 29 2002 adm.lock.ladd.9249
if i do: % touch booger i get: -rw-r--r-- 1 root list 0 Mar 29 17:26 booger
my guess is this is because of NFS. the time on the two machines is synchronized via NTP, so the time on both machines is the same. the locks directory itself (and all of the other mailman directories) are on a local drive - just the archive and mbox files are mounted via NFS.
generally, removing the locks fixes the problem (which happens once or twice a day).
What you're seeing is that the lock file timestamp is in the future, and that's by design; the file timestamp is used as the 'expiration time' to break stale locks. It's normal behavior. Do you think it's causing problems?
(This 'feature' of ls is not well known, but that's what it does for times in the future.)

Dan Mick wrote:
What you're seeing is that the lock file timestamp is in the future, and that's by design; the file timestamp is used as the 'expiration time' to break stale locks. It's normal behavior. Do you think it's causing problems?
(This 'feature' of ls is not well known, but that's what it does for times in the future.)
that was what i thought (the future timestamp).
however on other installations of mailman i hadn't noticed this (although now that i look, all of the locks on the other machines are pretty old, so perhaps time caught up with them...).
in any event, i wasn't sure if this was the problem; however removing the locks generally fixes the problems (ie messages on the list won't appear and after removing the locks, they do).
in any event, i suspect either nfs problems or something weird with debian's installation.
also, some of the config files and all of the archive / mbox files are from an older installation of mailman, so it's possible that something's screwed up that way.
-- Will Yardley input: william < @ hq . newdream . net . >
participants (2)
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Dan Mick
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Will Yardley