David Malone wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 06, 1999 at 01:29:16PM -0600, Jonathan Lemon wrote:
> 
>> From the manual page for flock:
>> 
>> NOTES
>>      Locks are on files, not file descriptors.  That is, file descriptors du-
>>      plicated through dup(2) or fork(2) do not result in multiple instances of
>>      a lock, but rather multiple references to a single lock.  If a process
>>      holding a lock on a file forks and the child explicitly unlocks the file,
>>      the parent will lose its lock.
> 
> Doesn't this make it impossible to hold a lock on a file when you
> want to fork a child to do some task 'cos the lock will be dropped
> when the child closes its copy of the file discriptor on exit?
> Either it's a posix goof or the lock shouldn't be let go until
> either explicitly released or the last instance of the file discriptor
> is closed?

The lock doesn't seem to be released until *explicitly* released, like
the manual page says. I don't think closing the descriptor counts as
an explicit unlock, though I am probably wrong. Run this program,
you'll see the parent still has the lock. Change close(fd) to flock(fd,
LOCK_UN) and you'll see it doesn't. It's possible I've misunderstood
something though.

#include <fcntl.h>
#include <err.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int
main(void) {
        int fd;

        fd = open("lock", O_CREAT|O_RDWR, 0600);
        if (fd < 0)
                err(1, "open");

        if (flock(fd, LOCK_EX) != 0)
                err(1, "flock");

        switch (fork()) {
        case -1:
                err(1, "fork");
        case 0:
                close(fd);
                _exit(0);
        default:
                sleep(2);
                break;
        }

        system("lsof | less");
        return (0);
}

-- 
Ben Smithurst            | PGP: 0x99392F7D
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