procmail locking problem warning (was Re: procmail on cygwin)

[Jason Tishler <jason at tishler dot net>]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 01:49:58PM -0500, Jason Tishler wrote:
> Otherwise, you can try my attached build recipe.

I found an issue with my procmail build recipe that causes a mbox file
locking problem.  So, I'm posting this warning.

If interested, see the following for the aforementioned recipe:

    http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00543.html

Occasionally, I would get errors such as the following in my procmail.log
file:

    procmail: Error while writing to "/var/spool/mail/jt"
    procmail: Truncated file to former size

The above is due to procmail's autoconf (script) adding the following
to autoconf.h:

    /*locktype: 4, countlocks: 80, timeout 0, watchdog 1a, /tmp/_locktest*/
    /*locktype: 2, countlocks: 80, timeout 0, watchdog 17, /tmp/_locktest*/
    /*locktype: 1, countlocks: 80, timeout 0, watchdog 1a, /tmp/_locktest*/
    /* Hotwire LOCKINGTEST=000 */
    /* Procmail will lock via: dotlocking */
    #define NOfcntl_lock

The specific culprit is the "#define NOfcntl_lock" which disables fcntl()
locking support in procmail.  Since, mutt uses fcntl() and dotlocking,
there is a small window in which a mbox file is locked via fcntl() but
not yet via dotlocking.  This is the root cause to my transient procmail
write errors.

My WAG is that procmail's autoconf is having problems with missing
".exe" strings in executable names during mv operations:

    Initiating fcntl()/kernel-locking-support tests
    mv: preserving times for `_locktst': No such file or directory
    mv: preserving ownership for `_locktst': No such file or directory
    mv: cannot unlink `_autotst': No such file or directory
    mv: cannot remove `_autotst': No such file or directory

I have temporarily "fixed" the problem by commented out the "#define
NOfcntl_lock" in autoconf.h while I wade through the obfuscated procmail
coding style.

Maybe it's time for maildrop... :,)

Jason

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