You are contradicting yourself. Either the OS is providing a fully
atomic rename or it doesn't. All POSIX compatible OS provide an atomic
rename functionality that renames the file atomically or fails without
loosing the target side. On POSIX OS it doesn't matter if the target exists.
This is not a contradiction. Although the rename operation is atomic,
the whole "change status" process is not. It is because there are two
operations: #1 delete old status file and #2. rename the new status
file. And because there are two operations, there is still a race
condition. I see no contradiction here.
You don't need locks or any other fancy stuff. You just need to make
sure that you flush the data and metadata correctly to the disk and
force a re-write of the directory inode, too. It's a standard pattern on
POSIX platforms and well documented in e.g. the maildir RFC.
It is not entirely true. We are talking about two processes. One is
reading a file, another one is writting it. They can run at the same
time, so flushing disk cache forcedly won't help.
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