LOCKSPOOL(1)

💌 LOCKSPOOL(1) — the General Commands Manual, but make it cute 💌

okay bestie, sit down, we're talking about lockspool from section 1 of the manual. yes, the General Commands Manual. she's a little icon, she's tiny, she's doing SO much. 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

lockspool — lock user's system mailbox

like. that's it. that's the whole job. locking your mailbox so nobody else grabs it while you're in there. main character energy fr 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

lockspool [username]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea ☕ — lockspool is literally built so a client mail program can attain proper locking. that's the whole point of her existence and she's obsessed with it.

what she does: she obtains a username.lock for the calling user, and then she just… holds it. like a bestie holding your spot in line. she retains that lock until stdin is closed, OR until she receives a signal like SIGINT, SIGTERM, or SIGHUP. so if you're done, close the pipe. if things go feral, send a signal. either way she lets go. periodt.

✨ bonus round: the superuser may specify the name of a user in order to lock a different mailbox. yes, root can lock someone else's mailbox. very powerful. very "I have admin privileges and I'm not afraid to use them" of them. 👑

now, the result reporting, because she's communicative:

• if lockspool is able to create the lock file, "1" is written to stdout
• otherwise "0" is written, and an error message is written to stderr 😭

and no, she does not give up immediately like some quitter. lockspool will try up to 10 times to get the lock, sleeping for a short period in between tries. ten attempts. she is persistent. she is trying her best. ngl that's lowkey inspiring.

Typical usage: a user mail agent (such as mail(1)) opens a pipe to lockspool when it needs to lock the user's mail spool. then — and this is the elegant part, the way that this just works — closing the pipe will cause lockspool to release the lock. iconic behaviour. no extra commands, no drama, just close the pipe and she's out. 🎀

🎀 FILES 🎀

• /var/mail/username.lock — user's mail lock file 💖

🌈 EXIT STATUS 🌈

the lockspool utility exits 0 on success, and 1 if an error occurs.

zero means we ate. one means something went wrong. that's it, that's the whole vibe check. ⭐

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

• mail(1)
• mail.local(8)
• smtpd(8)

go read those too, iykyk 📚

🧚 HISTORY 🧚

the lockspool program appeared in OpenBSD 2.4. she's been serving looks and locks since the 90s, no cap. a true veteran. 👑

and that's the whole page bestie!! this one shipped with the Debian manual pages, dated January 25, 2019 — so if you ever need to cite your sources, that's the version and date right there. stan a reliable little locking utility. 🌸✨💅