| SHLOCK(1) | General Commands Manual | SHLOCK(1) |
| shlock | [-du] [-p PID] -f lockfile |
shlock uses the link(2) system call to make the final target lock file, which is an atomic operation (i.e. "dot locking", so named for this mechanism's original use for locking system mailboxes). It puts the process ID ("PID") from the command line into the requested lock file.
shlock verifies that an extant lock file is still valid by using kill(2) with a zero signal to check for the existence of the process that holds the lock.
The -d option causes shlock to be verbose about what it is doing.
The -f argument with lockfile is always required.
The -p option with PID is given when the program is to create a lock file; when absent, shlock will simply check for the validity of the lock file.
The -u option causes shlock to read and write the PID as a binary pid_t, instead of as ASCII, to be compatible with the locks created by UUCP.
#!/bin/sh
lckfile=/tmp/foo.lock
if shlock -f ${lckfile} -p $$
then
# do what required the lock
rm ${lckfile}
else
echo Lock ${lckfile} already held by `cat ${lckfile}`
fi
#!/bin/csh -f
set lckfile=/tmp/foo.lock
shlock -f ${lckfile} -p $$
if ($status == 0) then
# do what required the lock
rm ${lckfile}
else
echo Lock ${lckfile} already held by `cat ${lckfile}`
endif
The examples assume that the file system where the lock file is to be created is writable by the user, and has space available.
Cannot handle the case where a lock file was not deleted, the process that created it has exited, and the system has created a new process with the same PID as in the dead lock file. The lock file will appear to be valid even though the process is unrelated to the one that created the lock in the first place. Always remove your lock files after you're done.
| June 29, 1997 | NetBSD 6.1 |