Fwd: Unable to deliver your message

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Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 15:02:45 +0200 (MEST)
From: Arne John Glenstrup <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Unable to deliver your message

Hi Jason,


I wasn't allowed to send an ifile "bug" email to the ifile-discuss mailing
list, so here's a copy of what I sent:


To: [email protected]
Subject: Semaphore problems with ifile

What version of ifile are you using? : 1.1.4

What operating system do you run? : Linux RedHat 7.3

What is your default C compiler? : gcc

What mail client do you use? :

What version of perl is on your system? : 5.6.0

Did you have any problems installing ifile?  If so, please describe
them here: No


Did you encounter any problems while running ifile (e.g. lost mail -
poor job of filtering)?  If so, please describe them here (copies of
/tmp/ifile.info, ifilter.mh.info and irefile.mh.info and would be
really helpful) :

Somehow the ifile semaphore was left in a non-zero state, which caused all
subsequent mail filtering to pile up, waiting for the semaphore.



Do you have any suggestions on how to improve ifile?

The current semaphore solution is problematic: ifile could easily be run
by hundreds of different users on the same mail server, in effect
serialising all mail filtering.  Further, the users might not have
permissions on the mail server to reset the semaphore manually if anything
goes wrong.  Finally, the semaphore might by chance be used for something
totally different than ifile signalling.

Really, ifile should only wait for other ifile processes USING THE SAME
.idata FILE to terminate.  So it sounds like some locking file mechanism
or named semaphore is called for.


Best Regards,

- -- Arne
__________________________________________________________________________
Arne John Glenstrup
[email protected]
http://www.diku.dk/~panic/



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