Re: [Nmh-workers] nmh should be more careful about when it unlinks draft files

[Paul Vixie]

On Tuesday, 3 January 2017 10:50:11 PST Ken Hornstein wrote:

> >> - The file is created with creat(), which as you know does get called

> >> with O_CREAT, but does not include O_EXCL.

> ...

> At least in the case of comp(1), by the time creat() is called it is

> writing a new draft into that file. It seems like the assumption at

> that point is that no one else is writing to that file. So I am thinking

> that using O_CREAT | O_EXCL is fine. What do others think? It looks

> like we could do something similar in replsbr.c:replout().

 

the error it signals up-stack must tell its caller why it fails, so that its caller can then try the next possible filename (message number). only if it fails N times in a row (suggest 6 or 42, from the prisoner and douglas adams) should comp then fail.

 

this should be done for all file-creation including inc/refile/rcvstore/etc.

 

if we're not going to do this much, then adding O_EXCL will do very little good.

 

--

P. Vixie