[OpenAFS] Mail delivery into OpenAFS

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:

> Using link also happens to defend against the case of giving two
> messages the same name.  The system is slightly less robust when
> using rename than when using link, and the reasoning behind maildir
> was done based on using link.

Fair enough.  But that really can only happen if something has gone
"impossibly" wrong.  The basic design of maildirs mandates that these
file names be unique; see:

    http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html

(Especially the bits in bold.)

But your point leads to an interesting question.  Suppose I have "i"
but not "d" permission on AFS directory foo.  And suppose two of my
processes on different machines simultaneously attempt to rename() two
different files to foo/bar.  Is it guaranteed that exactly one of them
will succeed?

 - Pat