CIFS/SMB resource deadlock

trevor@tecnopolis.ca trevor@tecnopolis.ca
Sat, 7 Sep 2002 14:21:11 -0500 (CDT)


I have only one additional concern with rdiff-backup.  It has to do with
exclusive write-locks on Windows shares.  Mainly MS Outlook files.

I use rdiff-backup to backup Windows shares using smbmount on a linux
box.  It works almost perfectly.  The only thing it seems to choke on so
far is Outlook.  Many people leave Outlook running continuously, and it
looks like Outlook exclusively write locks its data files at all times
while it is running.

This seems to cause rdiff-backup to die when it reaches those files with
a "resource deadlock avoided" error.

I was wondering if instead of dying you could issue an error and
continue starting with the next file.  In this case you would not do
anything with any currently backed-up copy of the locked file (no
increments made, no deletion, etc).  This would seem more appropriate.
Then you could exit (assuming successful completion) with a
new/different non-zero exit value to differentiate between complete
success and mostly-complete/some-files-skipped success.

Of course, the outlook file will never be backed-up if Outlook is never
shutdown, but I will assume that occasionally it will catch it not
running and be able to backup the locked files.

If this has been discussed before, please let me know and I'll scan the
archives more thoroughly.

Thanks!