lockfile problem

[Garrett G. Hodgson]

i'm having some trouble using mailman, and it appears to
be a problem with lockfiles and either nfs or sgi.
given the following program:

import sys, os, marshal, string, posixfile, time

ou = os.umask(0)
try:
	lock_file = posixfile.open(
		os.path.join( '/home/mailman/locks', '%s.lock' % 'testlock' ),
			'a+')
finally:
	os.umask(ou)
lock_file.lock('w|', 1)

when i run it on a sunos machine, where /home/mailman actually resides,
it works.  when i run it on our sgi web server machine, where it is nfs
mounted, it fails with:

$ testlock.py   
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "testlock.py", line 12, in ?
    lock_file.lock('w|', 1)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python1.5/posixfile.py", line 190, in lock
    flock = fcntl.fcntl(self._file_.fileno(), cmd, flock)
IOError: (22, 'Invalid argument')

any ideas how i can fix this?

-- 
Garry Hodgson			comes a time
garry at sage.att.com		when the blind man
Software Innovation Services	takes your hand, says,
AT&T Labs			"don't you see?"