How to safely maintain a status file

[Christian Heimes]

Am 08.07.2012 22:57, schrieb Laszlo Nagy:
> But even if the rename operation is atomic, there is still a race
> condition. Your program can be terminated after the original status file
> has been deleted, and before the temp file was renamed. In this case,
> you will be missing the status file (although your program already did
> something just it could not write out the new status).

You are contradicting yourself. Either the OS is providing a fully
atomic rename or it doesn't. All POSIX compatible OS provide an atomic
rename functionality that renames the file atomically or fails without
loosing the target side. On POSIX OS it doesn't matter if the target exists.

You don't need locks or any other fancy stuff. You just need to make
sure that you flush the data and metadata correctly to the disk and
force a re-write of the directory inode, too. It's a standard pattern on
POSIX platforms and well documented in e.g. the maildir RFC.

You can use the same pattern on Windows but it doesn't work as good and
doesn't guaranteed file integrity for two reasons:

1) Windows's rename isn't atomic if the right side exists.

2) Windows locks file when a program opens a file. Other programs can't
rename or overwrite the file. (You can get around the issue with some
extra work, though.)

Christian