lockfiles vs record locks (was Re: record is being updated - access denied)

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 05:21:51PM -0400, Dennis Malen wrote:
> We are sitting in a file on one record which islocked. We want to either 
> delete or update and we get the message that:
> 
> "Record is being updated - Access Denied"
> 
> We can fix the problem by a fast reboot which we don't want to have to do. 
> Is there any other way to unlock the file other than going into ?- filePro 
> Directory in the Main Menu and press "delete formats" and pressing M- 
> Lockfile?
> 
> Lastly, we had everyone log off the system and accessed M- Lockfile, which 
> had no effect.

Yup, it didn't.

There is a difference, which people trot out on this list about once a
month (do we have a FAQ, folk?) between lockfiles -- which keep entire
programs from interfering with entire other programs -- and kernel file
locks, which lock a range of bytes (one record) in a file against other
programs.


The former cause messages like 

Request Output With Processing function running on this file

and can be cleared by killing a lockfile.


The latter, on the other hand, protect only one record at a time in a
given file, cause the message you're seeing (or a pause in a dreport
run), and can be displayed by using showlock.  I don't, actually,
know of any way to manually clear them, though, if they get left behind
by a dying process and not reaped by the kernel.  I've never known of
one.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
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