[comp.soft-sys.andrew] Wierd AMS Error

brianc@ZETA.SAINTJOE.EDU (Brian Capouch) (09/22/90)

Suddenly, without any other associated wierdness, AMS refuses to delete
my mail messages as I'm quitting.  Here's the error I get:

Error: Operation would block (flock in OpenMSDirectory)

Could anyone tell me what easy fix should be invoked here?

Thanks
Brian Capouch
Networking Specialist
Saint Joseph's College
brianc@saintjoe.edu

"You guys quit having such a good time.  This is school!!"

Craig_Everhart@TRANSARC.COM (09/24/90)

It wouldn't be wrong to ask what your configuration is.

The thing that's locked seems to be your ~/.MESSAGES/mail/.MS_MsgDir
file, generally done by doing an flock(2) on that file.  I'd argue that
some other agent has that file locked--usually another process on that
same machine, left over from something else that you did.

Does that jog memories at all?

		Craig

Craig_Everhart@TRANSARC.COM (09/25/90)

Brian and I resolved this off-line.  His problem was a zero-length file
in the folder into which his ATK-formatted posts were going, and CUI or
his flames file were handling that situation badly.  (I've deleted his
resolution messages, unfortunately, but I believe that the zero-length
file was in a folder.)  It sounds like this qualifies as a CUI/message
server bug.

In trying to reproduce the problem, I'm unable to.  I have no
.AMS.flames file.  I can put a zero-length file in my mail folder, touch
the .AMS_DIRMOD file, and read a new message with CUI.  CUI correctly
notices the zero-length garbage file (~/.MESSAGES/mail/+garbage) and
incorporates it (actually, deletes it--hm).

Maybe things don't work out so gracefully when a Flames file has trouble
processing the non-existent message headers.

		Craig