I can duplicate your problem. I modified your code like this for testing:

use strict;
use File::Copy;
use Fcntl ':flock'; # import LOCK_* constants
my $status_file = "/tmp/flocktest";

open(STATUS, "+<$status_file") || die "Can't open file";
print "getting lock...\n";
flock(STATUS,LOCK_EX) || die "Can't lock file";
print "waiting...\n";
sleep 10;
print "copying file...\n";
# copy(\*STATUS,"/tmp/foo");
copy("$status_file","/tmp/foo");
print "finished copy, waiting....\n";
sleep 10;
[download]

With the \*STATUS line uncommented, I get the following behavior (the two columns represent two terminals):

% ./test.pl
getting lock...
waiting...
            % ./test.pl
            getting lock...
copying file...
finished copy, waiting...
%
            waiting...
            copying file...
            finished copy, waiting...
            %
[download]

And with the "$status_file" line uncommented, I get:

% ./test.pl
getting lock...
waiting...
            % ./test.pl
            getting lock...
copying file...
finished copy, waiting...
            waiting...
            copying file...
            finished copy, waiting...
%            %
[download]

The only explanation I can offer comes from the flock(3B) man page in Solaris:

Locks are on files, not file descriptors. That is, file descriptors duplicated through dup(2) or fork(2) do not result in multiple instances of a lock, but rather multiple references to a single lock. If a process holding a lock on a file forks and the child explicitly unlocks the file, the parent will lose its lock. Locks are not inherited by a child process.

This tells me that when copy() closes the file (even if it opened it using a different handle) the lock is lost. I may be completely wrong, though...

--ZZamboni

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