>Subject: Re: [Exim] lockfile won't disappear
>Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 21:00:36 +0000 (GMT)
>From: Philip Hazel <ph10@???>
>To: Jim Pazarena <exim@???>
>cc: exim-users@???
>On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, Jim Pazarena wrote:
>> I have 5 machines all running on FreeBSD 4.1, with exim v3.20 and
>> using BerkeleyDB 3.1.14.
>>
>> They all have lockfiles (wait-remote_smtp.lockfile, retry.lockfile &
>> reject.lockfile) hanging around indefineately.
>>
>> I have not set "lockfile_timeout", because the default (30m) should be
>> adequate.
>>
>> The lockfiles however are days -- even weeks old.
>This is not a problem. The lockfiles for the hints databases do not lock
>by their mere existence. They are opened, and a lock is taken out on the
>open file when Exim wants to lock a hints database. Once created, the
>lock files never go away. I thought I said this in the manual, but I
>can't find it. Maybe I said it in the book...
>[Originally, Exim took out locks on the open database files, but because
>the DBM libraries do things other than just opening files on their
>"open" calls, this was buggy. For this reason, Exim needs a lock
>*before* trying to open a hints database.]
>lockfile_timeout is an option on the appendfile transport that applies
>to the locking of mailbox files. In this case, the mere existence of the
>lock file constitutes a lock.
I see now, why I originally posted my question.
Here is an entry I discovered in a main.log file on a system which only
send ONE email a night:
2001-01-29 12:49:59 14NLFP-000PcK-00 <= root@??? U=root P=local
S=340 T="test to root" from <root@???> for root
2001-01-29 12:49:59 14NLFP-000PcK-00 failed to open DB file /u/exim/spool/db/wait-remote_smtp: File exists
---
upon examination of the file, it has:
-rw-r------ 1 mail mail 0 Jan 17 00:05 wait-remote_smtp.lockfile
---
Since this 'lockfile' hasn't been *touched* since jan 17th, why, day after
day does exim not clobber it? I have the same lockfile error message every
day since Jan 17th.
--
Jim Pazarena mailto:paz@qcislands.net
http://www.qcislands.net/paz
