How to safely maintain a status file

[Laszlo Nagy]

> You are contradicting yourself. Either the OS is providing a fully
> atomic rename or it doesn't. All POSIX compatible OS provide an atomic
> rename functionality that renames the file atomically or fails without
> loosing the target side. On POSIX OS it doesn't matter if the target exists.
This is not a contradiction. Although the rename operation is atomic, 
the whole "change status" process is not. It is because there are two 
operations: #1 delete old status file and #2. rename the new status 
file. And because there are two operations, there is still a race 
condition. I see no contradiction here.
>
> You don't need locks or any other fancy stuff. You just need to make
> sure that you flush the data and metadata correctly to the disk and
> force a re-write of the directory inode, too. It's a standard pattern on
> POSIX platforms and well documented in e.g. the maildir RFC.
It is not entirely true. We are talking about two processes. One is 
reading a file, another one is writting it. They can run at the same 
time, so flushing disk cache forcedly won't help.