stephen@dcl-cs.UUCP (Stephen J. Muir) (12/16/85)
I think that "inews", "rnews" and "expire" should never run in combination with themselves or each other (I know that "inews" and "rnews" are the same program and that only one "expire" should be running anyway). They should each apply an exclusive lock which applies to them all when they start. For "inews" and "rnews", they should queue their input/parameters somehow and run a queue processing daemon which processes the articles/batches one at a time (using the *same* exclusive lock). It is necessary for "inews" so that the user is not kept waiting and for "rnews" to help systems which don't use UUCP as the news transport mechanism (like us) where the sending machine, at present, has to wait until "rnews" completes! (It will help UUCP news transport system as well). For "expire", it will just wait until it gains the exclusive lock, then run to completion. -- UUCP: ...!seismo!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!stephen DARPA: stephen%comp.lancs.ac.uk@ucl-cs | Post: University of Lancaster, JANET: stephen@uk.ac.lancs.comp | Department of Computing, Phone: +44 524 65201 Ext. 4599 | Bailrigg, Lancaster, UK. Project:Alvey ECLIPSE Distribution | LA1 4YR