in reply to SOLVED [flock on Ubuntu 9.10]

flock blocks until a lock can be obtained (unless you tell it otherwise).
use strict; use warnings; use Fcntl qw( :flock ); sleep(1); open(my $fh, '+<', $0) or die "open: $!\n"; print localtime().": $$'s flock attempt starts\n"; flock($fh, LOCK_EX) or die "flock: $!\n"; print localtime().": $$'s flock obtained\n"; sleep(5); print localtime().": $$ ends\n";
$ for q in 1 2 3 4 ; do perl 807067.pl & done Fri Nov 13 17:21:04 2009: 20079's flock attempt starts Fri Nov 13 17:21:04 2009: 20079's flock obtained Fri Nov 13 17:21:04 2009: 20080's flock attempt starts Fri Nov 13 17:21:04 2009: 20082's flock attempt starts Fri Nov 13 17:21:04 2009: 20081's flock attempt starts Fri Nov 13 17:21:09 2009: 20079 ends Fri Nov 13 17:21:09 2009: 20081's flock obtained Fri Nov 13 17:21:14 2009: 20081 ends Fri Nov 13 17:21:14 2009: 20082's flock obtained Fri Nov 13 17:21:19 2009: 20082 ends Fri Nov 13 17:21:19 2009: 20080's flock obtained Fri Nov 13 17:21:24 2009: 20080 ends

Now try using LOCK_EX | LOCK_NB...

Fri Nov 13 17:26:42 2009: 20116's flock attempt starts Fri Nov 13 17:26:42 2009: 20116's flock obtained Fri Nov 13 17:26:42 2009: 20117's flock attempt starts flock: Resource temporarily unavailable Fri Nov 13 17:26:42 2009: 20118's flock attempt starts flock: Resource temporarily unavailable Fri Nov 13 17:26:42 2009: 20119's flock attempt starts flock: Resource temporarily unavailable

You can detect a denied lock using

use Errno qw( EWOULDBLOCK ); if (flock(..., ... | LOCK_NB)) { lock obtained } elsif ($! == EWOULDBLOCK) { lock denied } else { some error }

Update: Additions.