Topic: locking

• Preventing concurrent runs of an admin script: flock, lockf and a named mutex on Windows

  A scheduled or agent-triggered admin script that can be started again before the previous run finished needs a lock, not a hope that it never happens. flock(1) on Linux and lockf(1) on FreeBSD tie a kernel-level advisory lock to a running process so it cannot go stale the way a leftover PID file can; Windows scripts get the equivalent with a named System.Threading.Mutex.

  methodology · en · reviewed · knowledge as of 2026-09-24

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