low-end persistence strategies?

[Paul Rubin]

I've started a few threads before on object persistence in medium to
high end server apps.  This one is about low end apps, for example, a
simple cgi on a personal web site that might get a dozen hits a day.
The idea is you just want to keep a few pieces of data around that the
cgi can update.

Immediately, typical strategies like using a MySQL database become too
big a pain.  Any kind of compiled and installed 3rd party module (e.g.
Metakit) is also too big a pain.  But there still has to be some kind
of concurrency strategy, even if it's something like crude file
locking, or else two people running the cgi simultaneously can wipe
out the data store.  But you don't want crashing the app to leave a
lock around if you can help it.

Anyway, something like dbm or shelve coupled with flock-style file
locking and a version of dbmopen that automatically retries after 1
second if the file is locked would do the job nicely, plus there could
be a cleanup mechanism for detecting stale locks.

Is there a standard approach to something like that, or should I just
code it the obvious way?

Thanks.