Subject: Re: procmail, aix41, afs

From: [email-masked] (Stephen R. van den Berg)
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 18:34:36 +0100

"(Roger Lee)" <[email-masked]> wrote:
>:0
>* ^Subject:.*igloo
>testmail

>procmail: Opening "testmail"
>procmail: Acquiring kernel-lock
>procmail: Reiterating kernel-lock
>procmail: [20574] Fri Feb 24 16:55:17 1995
>procmail: Reiterating kernel-lock
>procmail: [25218] Fri Feb 24 16:55:21 1995
>procmail: Reiterating kernel-lock

This indicates that procmail is trying to use more than one kernel locking
method, but the second (or third) one persistently fails.

I.e. it performs something like:
fcntl()-lock (succeeds)
lockf()-lock (fails)
fcntl()-lock is released
sleep 16 seconds, then try the whole circus again, hoping that whichever
program that was holding the lockf() lock will release it some time soon.
If there is no such program, then you have a problem :-).

If procmail was misconfigured, it could be that the fcntl()-lock also
performs an implicit lockf()-lock (which subsequently fails when procmail
tries to perform it explicitly).

I suggest you recompile procmail and then pay attention to the lockingtests,
specify a directory which is on the same filesystem as testmail.

-- 
Sincerely,                                  [email-masked]
           Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless).

"Good moaning!"