On Sun, 18 Jul 1999, Rik Hemsley wrote:
> On 19-Jul-99 Stefan Taferner wrote:
> > On Thu, 15 Jul 1999, Rik Hemsley wrote:
> > [...]
> >> Here's a description of how to write to Maildir from man 5 maildir:
> >> 
> >>        The tmp directory is used to ensure reliable delivery,  as
> >>        discussed here.
> >>  
> >>        A program delivers a mail message in six steps.  First, it
> >>        chdir()s to the maildir directory.  Second, it stat()s the
> >>        name  tmp/time.pid.host,  where time is the number of sec-
> >>        onds since the beginning of 1970 GMT, pid is the program's
> >>        process  ID,  and host is the host name.  
> > 
> > I do not understand what this is for. 
> > Can you please enlighten me?
> 
> Which bit don't you understand ?

Why the file is created. It seems to be a lock file, but it is only unique
to the one process at the current second. So it will only block multiple
accesses from the same app.

Usually I would expect to lock the whole folder somehow, but this does
not seem to be done ... at least not from the explanation in the manpage.

--Stefan