Behdad Esfahbod <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>> I am told that O_EXCL has worked just fine on NFS for many years
>> now.  The open(2) man page on Linux is either outdated or assumes
>> ancient or broken NFS implementations.
>
> Well, the network I'm on is the Computer Science department's
> graduate students and faculty's network, a large Linux and Solaris
> based network.

My sources were very familiar with Solaris, so I'd be surprised if
this information didn't apply to its NFS implementation.

If you say that O_EXCL sometimes fails under NFS, I believe you.  But
I don't think Wget, with its minimal use of O_EXCL, needs to cover
that ground.  If I needed to lock a database, I'd certainly make sure
the locking mechanism was more robust.

> Now if you say newer Linux kernels are fine with it,

Note that I wasn't referring to Linux in particular (except for the
contents of open(2) man page), just to what I was told about NFS.

> Answering the other email here too, what's wrong with creating the
> file before the actual download begins?

I often ^C Wget before the download starts; I'd hate if that suddenly
started leaving empty files around.  The way it is now only
pathological cases, actual race conditions, are adversely affected
(but still handled correctly); normal usage remains unaffected.

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