[OpenAFS] flock on AFS files

[Todd M. Lewis]

I've got quite a bit of code that does flock() on files in AFS, but I've 
always worked under the assumption that this would only work if a single 
client is doing the writing. I don't recall whether that assumption was 
based on empirical testing, reading it somewhere, or being told. In 
those few cases where this is not practical, I have a designated writer 
client that other clients connect to through other means (sockets) and 
coordinate the updates that way. That's reasonably straightforward, but 
painful enough that I avoid it whenever possible.

Probably not the answer you wanted...
--
Todd_Lewis@unc.edu

On 10/27/2008 12:16 PM, Hans-Werner Paulsen wrote:
> Hello,
> today I am totally confused how the flock(2) call should work on
> AFS files.
> Normally locking works in the following way:
> 1	 fd = open("afs-file",O_RDWR)
> 	 do something
> 2	 flock(fd,LOCK_EX)
> 	 do something with "afs-file"
> 3	 flock(fd,LOCK_UN)
> 	 do something
> 4	 close(fd)
> 
> When there are two processes (on different machines) executing that
> code, the (2) flock call has to update the local copy of the afs-file,
> otherwise locking is useless. And the (3) flock call has to sync the
> local copy with the fileserver.
> Writing a small test program I see that this synchronization isn't done.
> How can I use the flock(2) call on AFS files?
> Thank you for any help,
> 
> HW
>