Network File Locking (rpc.lockd)

[Charles Daniel]

We installed FreeBSD 3.0 with the hopes of have having a PC based file
server which supports file locking. The man page for rpc.lockd that
comes with FreeBSD seem to imply that network file locking from other
unix hosts to the FreeBSD file server is supported. - We have had no
luck getting this working. When rpc.lockd is not running on the FreeBSD
host, one is not able to lock files (as you might expect) however when
rpc.lockd is running all fcntl requests to lock files on the server
always succeed - even when the file is already locked.

File locking does seem to work locally on the system - so the kernal
does support atleast local file locking. I've also noticed that only
versions 1 and 3 of nlockmgr are listed when you do a rpcinfo -p.
Other versions of UNIX seem to support versions 1,2,3 & 4. Has anyone
been able to get network file locking from other UNIX hosts working?
Does support need to be compiled into the kernel? Is there any
documentation on getting network file locking lying around out there.
Any help in shedding some light on this problem would be much welcome.

Charles Daniel (cdaniel AT cse.unl.edu)
Computer Science & Engineering.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

cda...@cse.unl.edu (Charles Daniel) writes:

> luck getting this working. When rpc.lockd is not running on the FreeBSD
> host, one is not able to lock files (as you might expect) however when
> rpc.lockd is running all fcntl requests to lock files on the server
> always succeed - even when the file is already locked.

That's correct. Had you looked at the sources for rpc.lockd, you
would have quickly found that it's just a stub - it does nothing more
than reply in the affirmative to all lock requests. :)

The world is still waiting for someone who wants a working NFS locking
daemon badly enough to write one, basically. Until now, at least, no
one has wanted one that badly. :(

--
- Jordan Hubbard
Co-founder/Release Manager, The FreeBSD Project
Walnut Creek CDROM