[Dovecot] Re: Bug? 1.0.0-test28 NFS locking problems

[Tim Southerwood]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 17:39:48 +0200
Matthias Andree <matthias.andree at gmx.de> wrote:

> Tim Southerwood <ts at doc.ic.ac.uk> writes:
> 
> > 1) It's not dovecot's fault, which is fair, and this bug should be
> > dropped as not a bug.
> >
> > 2) It's not really a bug with dovecot, but if F_SETLKW fails,
> > dovecot should fall back to something involving F_SETLK.
> >
> > I prefer number 2) as a user as it's clear to me that there is some
> > brokenness on NFS servers in the world and it would be to the
> > greater good if dovecot were more forgiving.
> 
> Number 2 is a bit disputable, because the OS is supposed to behave,
> and it is more sensible to fix the cause rather than implement
> workarounds in 1000+1 applications. 

Well, I would agree with you in an ideal world. However, there may be
sites where the linux admin has no control over the Solaris (or
other broken) servers holding users' mail - so it would be more
beneficial that the application have a failover mode (or at least some
compile time configuration). Dovecot uses this locking in two places
that matter so it's not IMHO a terrible disaster to add a small
workaround.

Having said that, I must be respectful; it's not my code, and I'm
grateful that it exists at all. It's a big improvement over WU-IMAP. Of
course the main developers must decide what to do. But I've expressed my
opinion which I feel has some merit.

Best wishes

Tim
-- 
Tim J Southerwood
Senior Programmer
CSG, Dept of Computing, Imperial College, London
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