Nori Heikkinen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > anyone have any opinions / dogma to share on the use or omission of > the second colon?
Below is a snip from the procmail mini-faq 8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------ Under Unix and other multitasking operating systems, several processes can be running at once. This means several mail messages can be in delivery at the same time. Without Procmail, the default system mailer hopefully handles this just fine when mail is delivered to a system mailbox, but if two Procmails are delivering two messages to the same file more or less at the same time, you end up with problems. (A typical symptom is that the first message gets a FFrom in its first line, and the second gets a rom without the F. This messes up the mailbox format thoroughly.) Rule of thumb: Use file locking when delivering to a file. Don't use file locking when delivering to /dev/null (because then it doesn't matter if the message gets mangled, and you might not have the permission to acquire a lock on a device), forwarding to another address, or piping into a program. A pipeline which ends up appending to a file should still use a lock, of course, since there is the same race condition as when delivering straight to a file. Rule of index finger: Using an unnecessary extra lock seldom hurts. (When it does hurt, you'll notice. :^) 8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------ Glyn -- Debian Home http://www.debian.org Debian Planet http://www.debianplanet.org/ For the children http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-jr/ In a hurry??? http://qref.sourceforge.net/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
