Use Case 14

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Use Case #14: use hierarchical resources to lock files and directories

FLOM is not expressly designed to lock files inside a filesystem, as listed in [Similar tools] there are many alternative tools that can be used to solve the file locking issues.
If, for any reason, you prefer to use FLOM instead some other tool, simple resources are not a practical way because a simple resource name can contain only alphabetic and numeric characters while a filename typically contains characters like dots, commas, slashes, underscores and so on; you could make some shell hacks like applying md5sum to filename and adding an alphabetic char in front of the exadecimal MD5 signature, but one of the purposes of FLOM is reducing shell scripting hacks in the lock playfield.
Hierarchical resources can help you because they accept any character inside the name.

Open two terminals and try this experiment:

1. inside the first terminal write this command at prompt, but do not press "enter": "flom -r /foo/bar -- ls"
2. inside the second terminal write this command at prompt, but do not press "enter": "flom -r /foo/bar -- ping -c 5 localhost"
3. now press "enter" key at the second terminal
4. switch to first terminal and press "enter" key

Expected result:

1. the second terminal pings localhost five times
2. the first terminal displays the current directory content after first terminal ended pinging

Terminal 2 output:

tiian@mojan:/usr$ flom -r /foo/bar -- ping -c 5 localhost
PING localhost (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.047 ms
64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.042 ms
64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.039 ms
64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.048 ms
64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.049 ms

--- localhost ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 3997ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.039/0.045/0.049/0.003 ms
tiian@mojan:/usr$

Terminal 1 output:

tiian@mojan:/usr$ flom -r /foo/bar -- ls
bin  games  include  lib  lib64  local  sbin  share  src
tiian@mojan:/usr$

Explanation:

the second command "ping -c 5 localhost" locks the resource "/foo/bar"; the first command "ls -la" enqueues and waits the resource "/foo/bar" becomes free before starting.

Some hierarchical resource details

Naming convention

The name of an hierarchical resource must comply with these restrictions:
1. hierarchical resource names must start with a slash ("/")
2. hierarchical resource names can not end with a slash ("/")
These are valid names:

• /tmp/foo.txt
• /foo/bar
• /this/is/my/file

These are not valid names:

• foo.txt (it does not start with a slash)
• /foo/bar/ (it does end with a slash)

Which characters you use inside a hierarchical resource name is up to you, you only have to comply with slashes restrictions explained above.

Supported options

Hierarchical resources support these options:

• -o, --resource-timeout
• -l, --lock-mode

Hierarchical resources don't support this option:

• -q, --resource-quantity

Why should I use FLOM to manage file locks?

As previously stated, other tools exists to manage file locks. So, why should I use FLOM instead of something else?

Some tools creates persistent locks

Persistent locks can be desiderable if you want a lock to survive an application or a system crash. Persistent locks can be a source of issues if your use case does not allow you to easily answer the question: "Is this persistent lock really necessary or is it a lock I should delete?"

Some lock technologies are not safe if the filesystem is not local

Notably, some NFS versions did not safely manage the file locks.

Some (distributed) filesystems do not have lock primitives

Non persistent file locks needs file locks primitives at the filesystem level: some does support locking APIs.

I already use FLOM...

FLOM allows you to manage distintc type of resources: you could choose FLOM just because you can use with files too.

Summary

This use case explains you how to use a file name as a resource name when using FLOM.

See also

Flom available arguments are documented in man page: use man flom.
Flom [Configuration] explains how you can specify flom behavior without using command line arguments.