jstewart@ccs.carleton.ca (John Stewart) (08/15/90)
The Sun Network and System Administration manual discusses mounting /var/spool/mail on client machines so that users don't have to login to a specific machine to read their mail. We do this and it has worked just fine so far. Since mail folders can be modified by more than one machine, this implies that /bin/mail uses lockf style locks which are known to all machines via lock daemons. Elm doesn't contain code to do lockf style locks; I have configured Elm to use flock style locks which won't work properly when a file can be modified by more than one machine. Elm seems to work ok on our mailhost machine (the machine on which /var/spool/mail actually resides) but I am reluctant to install it on our client machines and widely publicize it's availability until I am certain it issues locks that are compatible with those used by /bin/mail. If necessary I could modify Elm to do lockf style locking. If anyone knows for certain what style of locks Elm should use on a Sun network with /var/spool/mail mounted on many machines, I'd be interested in hearing from you! -- Bring back the stubby beer bottle!