NAME

     lockspool — lock user's system mailbox

SYNOPSIS

     lockspool [username]

DESCRIPTION

     lockspool is useful for a client mail program to attain proper locking.  lockspool obtains a
     username.lock for the calling user and retains it until stdin is closed or a signal like
     SIGINT, SIGTERM, or SIGHUP is received.  Additionally, the superuser may specify the name of
     a user in order to lock a different mailbox.

     If lockspool is able to create the lock file, “1” is written to stdout, otherwise “0” is
     written and an error message is written to stderr.  lockspool will try up to 10 times to get
     the lock (sleeping for a short period in between tries).

     Typical usage is for a user mail agent (such as mail(1)) to open a pipe to lockspool when it
     needs to lock the user's mail spool.  Closing the pipe will cause lockspool to release the
     lock.

FILES

     /var/mail/username.lock  user's mail lock file

EXIT STATUS

     The lockspool utility exits 0 on success, and 1 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO

     mail(1), mail.local(8), smtpd(8)

HISTORY

     The lockspool program appeared in OpenBSD 2.4.