Item1677: RCS may leave stale semaphone files after crash

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Priority: Normal
Current State: Closed
Released In:
Target Release: n/a
Applies To: Engine
Component: RcsWrap
Branches:
Reported By: RaymondLutz
Waiting For:
Last Change By: CrawfordCurrie
Received the following error:

Error saving topic
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RCS: /usr/bin/rcs  -l %FILENAME|F% failed: 

Go back in your browser and save your changes locally.

Determined that the error notice was due to a orphaned semaphore file, as mentioned in the RCS man file as a "BUG":
A catastrophe (e.g. a system crash) can cause RCS to leave behind a semaphore file that causes later invocations of RCS to claim that the RCS file is in use. To fix this, remove the semaphore file. A semaphore file's name typically begins with , or ends with _.

Indeed, I found that a semaphore file existed in the data folder for this web, and deleting it corrected the problem.

RcsWrap.pm should probably be enhanced to try to delete a left-over semaphore file since this is a known problem, or as a weaker alternative, add a more elaborate description to the error message to point out that deleting the semaphore file can correct the problem.

Will add an option to a utility program to scan data files and delete stale semaphores as an option.


Raymond hasn't produced this utility yet, and TBH I'm not sure of the value; it's easy enough to find such semaphore files and delete them manually.

I don't think a core code fix is appropriate here; this is a very rare error.Addressed by Support.Faq28

-- CrawfordCurrie - 25 Jun 2010

ItemTemplate edit

Summary RCS may leave stale semaphone files after crash
ReportedBy RaymondLutz
Codebase 1.0.5, 1.0.5 beta1, 1.0.4, 1.0.3, 1.0.2, 1.0.1, 1.0.0, 1.0.0 beta3, 1.0.0 beta2, 1.0.0 beta1, trunk
SVN Range Foswiki-1.0.4
AppliesTo Engine
Component RcsWrap
Priority Normal
CurrentState Closed
WaitingFor
Checkins
TargetRelease n/a
ReleasedIn
Topic revision: r2 - 25 Jun 2010, CrawfordCurrie
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