Jonathan Ryshpan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I want to sort my incoming email using procmail and rcvstore; I've noticed
>a number of things:
>(1) rcvstore doesn't lock the .mh_sequences files, or anything else. This
> should be pretty dangerous; the procmail man pages warn that bad things
> can happen, since procmail doesn't lock mh folders. Nevertheless ...
What is so dangerous? You would lose your sequences. Personally, I
don't consider the data in '.mh_sequences to be so vital that it
worries me. Incidently, I have never had a problem in practice, and
I have slocal, rcvstore handle almost all of my mail.
As far as I know, there isn't a problem with the message files
themselves, since file creation is atomic (except for possible NFS
problems).
>(2) MAIL.FILTERING doesn't say anything about this problem, so maybe it's
> theoretical rather than practical.
You could reduce the risk, at least in a sendmail setup, by having
slocal mail handled only on queue runs. That would tend to
serialize. With recent versions of sendmail, configuring "O
HoldExpensive=True" should do the trick, since the prog mailer is
expensive by default. I don't bother, since I think the risk is
small and the damage expected is minor.
>(3) It should be pretty easy to add .mh_sequences file locking. All you
> should have to do is open the .mh_sequences file with a lkfopen rather
> than an fopen (plus a few extra changes). Nevertheless ...
That is not nearly as easy as it looks. The mail might be delivered
on one system, and at the same time be read from another system over
nfs. Both may touch the unseen sequence.
>(4) Nobody has done it, despite it's having been in the TODO list for some
> time. So maybe it's not as easy as it looks.
>Any comments or suggestions?
>Thanks:
> Jonathan Ryshpan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> And God fulfills himself in many ways
> Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
> -- Tennyson
-NWR
