KSpagnol@massey.ac.nz (Ken Spagnolo) (09/04/89)
Does anyone know what this directory is for? Ours has never even been modified (9815 OSx4.4). I've looked in the docs (a wee bit) but haven't seen any references to it. Thanx. -- Ken Spagnolo - Systems Programmer, Postmaster, Usenet Administrator, etc... Computer Centre, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand K.Spagnolo@massey.ac.nz Phone: +64-63-69099 x8587 New Zealand = GMT+12
csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) (09/05/89)
In article <278@massey.ac.nz> K.Spagnolo@massey.ac.nz (Ken Spagnolo) writes: >Does anyone know what this directory is for? Ours has never even been >modified (9815 OSx4.4). It *used* to be for att mail(1) and mailx(1), which shuffled and copied your mailbox in and out of this directory in an attempt to prevent damage to the file in the event of a system crash while the mailbox was being written back. If mail(1) found a mailbox in the :saved directory, it would assume the system had crashed since the last time you received mail, and recover it for you. This feature, although possibly useful, was removed in OSx 4.1 whan the SVR3 mailx was ported and modified to use 4.3BSD-style flock(2) file locking. This was one of those difficult choices that we face in getting the OSx dualport to work properly: should we modify 4.3BSD Mail to use the old lockfile mecha- nism, or modify SVR3 mailx to use flock(2)? In the end, 4.3BSD won, since it was both easier to code and more robust. But it did make the :saved mechanism impossible, since it relied on being able to lock a file that hadn't been created yet, and you can't do that with flock(2). <csg>