in reply to How to apply flock

mod_perl guide has a chapter dedicated to concurrent access to file based databases like Berkley DB. There are discussed a number of strategies and hopefully it should answer all your questions on this topic.

--
Ilya Martynov, ilya@iponweb.net
CTO IPonWEB (UK) Ltd
Quality Perl Programming and Unix Support UK managed @ offshore prices - http://www.iponweb.net
Personal website - http://martynov.org

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: How to apply flock
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Nov 24, 2002 at 12:23 UTC
    For what it's worth, in my experience/experiments, using DB_File with the lastest version of the Berkeley DB(4x), there really isn't any need to do any sort of locking when all you want is to read.

    The Berkeley DB mechanisms take care of any potential data corruption.

    In the example below, run #1 and then #2 while #1 is still running (preferably in 2 separate shells -- simultaneous)

    # 1 perl -MFcntl -MDB_File -e"tie%a,'DB_File','rat.test',O_CREAT|O_RDWR or + die $!;for(1..1_000){select undef,undef,undef,.01;$a{a}++;}" # 2 perl -MFcntl -MDB_File -e"tie%a,'DB_File','rat.test',O_RDONLY or die $ +!;warn $a{a}"
    When you first run #1, and then #2 ( while #1 is still running), #2 will yield
    Warning: something's wrong at -e line 1.
    every time you invoke it, whilst #1 is still running.
    After #1 is finished running, then run #2 again, and it will yield 1000 at -e line 1.

    In my programs, I freely tie a DB_File for O_RDONLY, but for O_RDWR, I use a flocking mechanism like DB_File::Lock.


    MJD says you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!
    ** The Third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.