Avoiding competing process (was Re: indexes)

From: Tom von Alten <Tom_vonAlten_at_boi.hp.com_at_hypermail-project.org>
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 11:57:26 -0600
Message-Id: <01BDF1EA.7E679200.Tom_vonAlten_at_boi.hp.com>

Byron C. Darrah <bdarr_at_sse.FU.HAC.COM> wrote:
> For example, what I do at my site (and I would not be surprised to learn
> that a lot of other people do too) is direct incoming mail for an archive
> to an mbox file instead of piping it to hypermail. Then, at periodic
> intervals a cron job runs a Makefile that runs hypermail if and only
> if there are any new messages to be added to the archive.
>
> Of course, you would set the cron job's period to something greater than
> the amount of time it takes for your computer to update the hypermail
> archive to gurantee that two hypermail processes wont compete.

Good idea.

We have a wrapper script that stores the incoming message and calls hypermail. It uses a "ln" command to provide a semaphore and force multiple calls to hypermail to queue up if needed.

Having the message stored means that various error conditions can be recovered from if needed -- the wrapper sends the message on to the sysadmin if it or hypermail has a problem.

_____________ Hewlett-Packard Computer Peripherals Bristol Tom von Alten mailto:Tom_vonAlten_at_boi.hp.com Received on Wed 07 Oct 1998 08:14:24 PM GMT