[Mailman-Developers] race condition in locking ?

Ricardo Kustner ricardo@rixhq.nu
Tue, 8 Feb 2000 22:48:51 +0100


On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 10:59:07PM +0100, Thomas Wouters wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 09:31:44PM +0100, Ricardo Kustner wrote:
> > I wonder though what happens if some impatient moderator decides not to
> > wait before the page finnishes loading, switches to a differen webpage and
> > therefor breaks the python cgi process... will some approved posts stay in
> > the queue instead?
> Try it out ! ;) It depends on the exact behaviour of both the webbrowser and
> the webserver. I haven't checked the Mailman code but i assume it either
> continues with its jobs until it tries to write output, usually at the end
> of the script, or it gets a signal and cleans up nicely.
if you approve a bunch of posts it's a bit difficult work to figure out which
posts arrive... especially since my server needs a bit of time to have send
out all the posts... i never really timed how long it takes before all posts are
send out (i don't care that much about that though... people need to wait anyway
since the list is being moderated)
> 
> > I mentioned before that I think that it could be better if the cgi scripts
> > don't do anything more than just "mark" message as being approved... cgi
> > scripts should have a short life time and definately shouldn't be waiting
> > for something too long...
> I agree, and I think I've seen more comments and postings talking about it.
> Noone has implemented it yet, though, and the current method works too well
> for it to be a rela problem, I guess ;)
it's a big improvement that 1.2 now keeps the pending posts outside of 
the config.db, so i'm happy with that ... i have been one of the people begging for that :)

> > btw i used the original LockFile.py this time...
> Go ahead and try it with mine -- it should make the waits you have to endure
could you send me your latest version (complete file is ok, and a bit easier for me :) )
thanks...

Ricardo.

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