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From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com>
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Subject: Re: Is a successful call to write(2) atomic?
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Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2021 00:39:27 -0700
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In message <20210616072633.e4bd29839249465e385bbf6f@sohara.org>, 
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org> wrote:

>	IOW if one process writes ABC and another writes DEF both at the
>end of file you might get ABCDEF but you won't get ABDCEF you might also get
>ABDEF as D overwrites C...

Yup.  Some of the "garbled" lines I have been getting look suspiciously
like the "ABDEF" in your example.

>	John's code will work (it is the standard solution) - provided
>*every* writer uses it - without the O_APPEND you would need to put a seek
>to EOF inside the locked section which is the pattern I most often wind up
>with.

So the O_APPEND by itself isn't enough to fix the problem?  I still have
to wrap the calls to write() inside some sort of locking code?

I'll try both... O_APPEND, with and without locking... but it kind of seems
to me that if O_APPEND, by itself, were actually doing what the man page
says it does, then that alone ought to be enough to prevent garbling of
the output lines.


Regards,
rfg