Re: [EXIM] Spool directory on NFS ?

Top Page
Delete this message
Reply to this message
Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: James FitzGibbon
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [EXIM] Spool directory on NFS ?
On Sun, 22 Mar 1998, James FitzGibbon wrote:

> I'm interested in hearing if anyone has used exim with the spool_directory
> option set to an NFS directory. I'm trying to do two things: store
> the spool on NFS, and if possible share the spool directory among multiple
> hosts.


[This comment does not address the merits or otherwise of using NFS for
this purpose.]

Sharing the spool directory is not currently possible if multiple hosts
are putting messages onto it, because of the small but finite chance of
name clashes. I did design a scheme for using one or two of the high
base-62 digits in the second part of the name (currently the process id)
as a "host identifier", to solve this problem, but haven't yet done
anything about it, though it wouldn't be a lot of work.

> I've looked at the code in spool_out.c versus that for writing maildir
> files in transports/appendfile.c. There are a few minor differences in
> the syscalls uses to close files and checking of return codes, so I'm not
> entirely sure if the spool writing code is NFS clean.


Neither am I! I'd have to look at it.

-- 
Philip Hazel                   University Computing Service,
ph10@???             New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@???          England.  Phone: +44 1223 334714



--
*** Exim information can be found at http://www.exim.org/ ***