From: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Subject: Re: Mailbox corruption on The NFS server
Date: 02 Dec 2003 14:35:14 -0500
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>>>>> " " == Juri Haberland <list-linux.nfs@spoiled.org> writes:

     > It's considered a bad idea to put mailboxes on a NFS share as
     > there might be locking issues if two applications simultanously
     > acces the same mailbox. Either use the maildir format or don't
     > export your mailboxes via NFS.

Sort of. It can be made to work *provided* that you can guarantee that
your mail programs all agree to support the same file locking scheme.
Currently that means they must chose one (or both) of the following
schemes:

  - fcntl() (a.k.a. POSIX, a.k.a. lockf()) locking

  - dotlocking (a.k.a. creating a lock file using something like 'ln
    mailbox .mailbox.locked')

Note that the BSD flock() and use of O_EXCL in a dotlocking scheme are
not considered to be reliable within Linux NFS.

Cheers,
  Trond


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