Subject: File locking on FAT filesysem

From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 15:11:25 -0800 (PST)

I'm running pine 4.33 on FreeBSD and trying to access some mail files
stored on a FAT filesystem mounted thusly:

/dev/ad0s1		/win		msdos	rw,-u=casner,-g=staff 0 0

Access to mbx files works fine, but when I try to access a Berkeley
mail format file, I first get "[Opening "mail.foo" <-> ]" with a disk
access happening once per second for a long time, then "Mailbox
/win/casner/mail/mail.foo is locked, will override in 300 seconds..."
(BTW, it counts down at a rate of about 15 seconds every 5 seconds).
At that point, the mailbox is opened.

I've read the locking.txt documentation, I've run debug -9, and I'm
looking a the sources, but I haven't figured out what is going on.
I see several modules in pine and c-client which print this warning,
and I'm not sure which is involved.  I have not figured out where in
the code it does while it is initially stuck trying to open the file.

If I create a folder collection in a directory of the Unix filesystem
and put there a symlink to the file /win/casner/mail/mail.foo, then
the open works without delay.  Therefore, my guess is that pine is
having trouble either reading or creating a lock file, and that pine
does not following the symlink of the mail file to try to put the lock
file in the same directory.  (I did see some code to make sure that
the lock file itself is not a symlink, but maybe there's not check for
the mail file being a symlink.)

Is the problem that as I have mounted the FAT filesystem the files all
appear to be owned by "casner" and pine is trying to create the lock
file as somebody else?

Or perhaps that the FAT filesystem doesn't allow linking?  I see a
comment about FAT filesystems on linux in crexcl() not allowing
linking, so the lock file is created directly instead.  Would that not
work in my situation for some reason?
							-- Steve

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From: "SreePriya. G" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 08:14:57 +0530 (IST)

Hello:

Does anyone have any information on the internationalisation/localisation
effort for Pine?I request you to kindly give me the pointers to any info
on this, if any.

Thankyou

Sreepriya

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From: "Karl F. Larsen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 05:53:51 -0700 (MST)

Your using a Unix pine and it wants to do it's thing with files on a FAT
filesystem. This won't work. The windows pine does things properly using
FAT. Your solution, using sim links is proper and works. Be happy.

> work in my situation for some reason?

Yours Truly,

  	 - Karl F. Larsen, [email-masked]  (505) 524-3303  -

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From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 22:39:02 -0800 (PST)

> FAT. Your solution, using sim links is proper and works. Be happy.

Well, yes it works, but that means as I create new folders in the FAT
filesystem I have to manually create new symlinks from the Unix
filesystem to point to them.  I suppose I could write a script.

The thing is, there are hints in the code that someone thought this
should work.
							-- Steve