Question: posix fcntl module
Sheila King
sheila at spamcop.net
Tue Aug 28 17:25:51 EDT 2001
I have a question about file locking aspect of the fcntl module for Unix
systems.
I was checking out the man pages on the Linux system that I use (my
webhost), and under man flock(2) it mentions (among other things):
NOTES
flock(2) does not lock files over NFS. Use fcntl(2)
instead: that does work over NFS, given a sufficiently
recent version of Linux and a server which supports locking.
flock(2) and fcntl(2) locks have different semantics with
respect to forked processes and dup(2).
Python docs for the fcntl module state:
lockf(fd, operation, [len, [start, [whence]]])
This is essentially a wrapper around the fcntl() locking calls.
fd is the file descriptor of the file to lock or unlock, and...
Am I correct, then, in interpreting these together, to mean, that I will
get greater portability/control if I use fcntl.lockf than if I use
fcntl.flock? Because, as I read this, fcntl.lockf may work in situations
where fcntl.flock does not (especially over NFS?).
Please advise. Thanks,
--
Sheila King
http://www.thinkspot.net/sheila/
http://www.k12groups.org/
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