Re: Synchronization Problem

[norm]

Ken Hornstein <kenh@pobox.com> writes:
>>But it does illustrate what I think might be a more fundamental problem with
>>nmh: there is no way for that a user-written script can participate in nmh's
>>internal locking mechanism -- or if there is I don't recall where it is
>>documented.
>
>Well, here's the thing ... there is no "nmh internal locking mechanism".
>Never has been!  There's a perception that it is okay to run two nmh
>commands simultaneously ...
>
I have had that perception for years now. I don't know how it got into my
head.
>
>THAT has never been true, ever!  This goes
>back to the original MH design, when people were using glass terminals

and there could be as many as 25 of us all simultaneously logged into
one DEC PDP 11/45.

>and nobody would ever run two commands at once.

I run some scripts off crontab. They could cause a problem if they run while I
am manually using nmh. Fortunately, they are run at night when I am likely to
be asleep. I run them at night not to avoid clashes but to not use computer
cycles and disk accesses while I am doing manual stuff. BUT on rare occasions
when I have insomnia there could be clashes. From now on I will try to
remember to be careful.


    Norman Shapiro