Mike, if you are going to implement a lock server, why not finish the job and include Sqlite in the server, then you will not have a problem.
JS

Mike Ashmore wrote:
Hello all,
I'm working on a system in which I'm using SQLite to open a number of database files and to perform operations on aggregate views of those files.

The problem I've got is, some of the files I want SQLite to open and SELECT from, I can only acquire read access to. And the operating system I'm using doesn't allow me to place any sort of advisory lock on a file that I've only got read access to (it considers placing an advisory lock to be a write operation) (@#%!# high security operating systems).

Since modifying the OS isn't an option, the next step would appear to be to write some sort of external lock-management server, and have SQLite redirect all of its fcntl(F_SETLK / F_GETLK) operations to that server. I was wondering if anybody has done anything like this, and if perhaps someone could offer some tips on how I might go about it.

Clearly I'm going to have to pass the server the "op" and "struct fcntl" arguments from what originally was the fcntl call. But since the lock server will be a separate process, the file descriptor from my sqlite process doesn't seem terribly helpful in identifying what file I'm trying to lock. Looking through os_unix.c, I see numerous semi-inscrutable references to keeping track of inodes, etc; perhaps the inodes are the unique file references (as opposed to other process's file descriptors) my lock server should be keeping track of as well? Won't a given database file span quite a few inodes?

Since locking will require me to invoke (slow) IPC mechanisms, I don't want to send any more lock messages off to my lock server than absolutely necessary; any suggestions on how I should approach that?

Thanks in advance for any help you folks can offer on this problem.

-Mike Ashmore

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