Provided by: aegis_4.24.3-3_amd64 
NAME
aegis locks - how locking works, and which commands use them
DESCRIPTION
Aegis maintains a database of information about the projects in its care, and the various changes, both
completed and in progress. In order to ensure the integrity of this database, and also your project
repository, it uses locks.
From time to time, these locks are visible to the users, because they will be told that a command is
waiting for a particular lock. For some transactions, this can be a long wait.
Dining Philosophers
While UNIX supplies locks in various flavors, if you need an entire set of locks simultaneously, there
is no elegant “all or nothing ” interface available. This is unsurprising, as this is one of the
classic computer science problems, known as the Dining Philosophers problem.
The master lock is used to solve the Dining Philosophers problem, and is meant to be very transient. It
is only held while the other locks which are required (frequently two or more, hence the problem) are
requested - non-blocking. Once they are all obtained (or not, and any partials given back) the master
lock is released. It is usually held for much less than a second. If you notice the master lock being
held, it is almost always a symptom of the NFS lock daemon misbehaving.
If the lock(s) could not be obtained, the blocking lock is waited on (without the master). This is when
the "waiting for" message is issued. When obtained, it is released and the whole cycle starts again.
This is why you occasionally see a series of "waiting for" messages. (This could maybe be optimized
some, but it is still possible to block on yet another lock, and they you have to release all and wait
again. As yet, I'm not convinced the extra code complexity is required.)
Listing Locks
There is a command available to list the current Aegis locks.
aegis -list locks
Note that the project names are change numbers are guesses as the locks are hashed over a 16-bit range,
and range overlaps are possible. Collisions are also possible, but fortunately rarer.
Known Problems
There is a known problem with the HP/UX NFS clients. If you see persistent "no locks available" error
messages when is NFS mounted, try making the /lockfile file world writable. chmod 666 /lockfile There
is the possibility of a denial of service attack (which is why the default is 0600) but since you are
presently denied service anyway, it's academic.
COMMANDS
The following table shows the locks taken by the various commands. Note that theoretically some of the
commands take too few locks, but this has yet to prove to be a problem in practice. Also, "project
state file" and "change state file" are the same thing for branches, it just depends which way you are
looking at them at the time.
Command Global Project Project Ancestor Change User
State State Baseline Baselines State State
File File File File
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
aeb (dev) . . shared shared exclusive .
aeb (int) . . . shared exclusive .
aeca . . . . exclusive .
aechown . . . . exclusive exclusive
aeclean . . . . exclusive .
aeclone . exclusive . . exclusive exclusive
aecp . , , , exclusive .
aecpu . . . . exclusive .
aed . , , , exclusive .
aedb . . . . exclusive exclusive
aedbu . . . . exclusive exclusive
aede . , . . exclusive exclusive
aedeu . . . . exclusive exclusive
aedn . exclusive . . . .
aeib . exclusive . . exclusive exclusive
aeibu . exclusive . . exclusive exclusive
aeifail . exclusive . . exclusive exclusive
aeipass . exclusive exclusive . exclusive exclusive
aemv . , , , exclusive .
aena . exclusive . . . .
aenbr . exclusive . . . .
aenbru exclusive exclusive . . . .
aenc . exclusive . . . .
aencu . exclusive . . . .
aend . exclusive . . . .
aenf . . . . exclusive .
aenfu . . . . exclusive .
aeni . exclusive . . . .
aenpa exclusive . . . . .
aenpr exclusive . . . . .
aenrv . exclusive . . . .
aent . exclusive . . exclusive .
aentu . . . . exclusive .
aepa . exclusive . . . .
aera . exclusive . . . .
aerd . exclusive . . . .
aerfail . . . . exclusive exclusive
aeri . exclusive . . . .
aerm . , . . exclusive .
aermu . . . . exclusive .
aermpr exclusive . . . . .
aerpa exclusive . . . . .
aerpass . . . . exclusive .
aerpu . . . . exclusive .
aerrv . exclusive . . . .
aet . . , , exclusive .
SEE ALSO
You may wish to see the manual pages of all of the above commands. Many have descriptions of the
locking interactions.
COPYRIGHT
aegis version 4.24.3.D001
Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Peter Miller
The aegis program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use the 'aegis -VERSion License'
command. This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for
details use the 'aegis -VERSion License' command.
AUTHOR
Peter Miller E-Mail: millerp@canb.auug.org.au /\/\* WWW: http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~millerp/