From: Jeremy Henty <jeremy@...>
Date: 2002-12-14T21:34:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby BUG when using PStore and fork

In article <873cp128ap.fsf@squeaker.lickey.com>, Matt Armstrong wrote:
> ahoward <ahoward@fsl.noaa.gov> writes:
> 
>> i have gotten around this problem by spawning another process using
>> the unix at command with a time of 'now'
> 
>     system("thecommand &")

This doesn't solve the problem, which was that the child process
inherits a lock on the pstore archive.  This stops anything else using
the archive even though no process is currently doing anything with
it.  The "at now" trick works because the child process simply
schedules a job to do the business and terminates.  The job itself is
forked from a daemon, so it does not get the lock.

I now have a better solution which preforks a child *before* opening
the archive.  The parent then tells the child when it needs a new
process created and the child does the work.  So the forking process
has no lock, hence there is no proliferation of unnecessary locks.

Regards, 

Jeremy Henty