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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: ACCESS TO SHARED TAPEDRIVES
Message-ID: <6740@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 25-Nov-87 21:43:29 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6740
Posted: Wed Nov 25 21:43:29 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Nov-87 11:49:26 EST
References: <10542@brl-adm.ARPA> <271@cunixc.columbia.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) )
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 14

In article <271@cunixc.columbia.edu> howie@cunixc.columbia.edu (Howie Kaye) writes:
>What happens if the user never does release the drive, but logs out?

Long ago, I designed a public resource allocator that dealt with these
issues.  (However, I never implemented it.)  The solution to the above
question was that an attempt to allocate that was not able to be
satisfied using known free resources would then inspect the supposedly
allocated ones to see if the user was still active (logged in; this is
extendable to looking for processes running on his behalf if the device
was allocatable by daemons).  This fit in nicely with my design goal of
not requiring any modifications to existing system software (e.g. init).

UNIX has long needed a standardized facility like this, and it ought to
be much more general than merely an interface to magtape drives.