Bug #13630: GDBM writes frequently fail during heavy traffic.

From: cabel@panic.com Operating system: RedHat 7.1 PHP version: 4.0.6 PHP Bug Type: DBM/DBA related Bug description: GDBM writes frequently fail during heavy traffic. We're using GDBM version 1.8.0, as of May 19, 1999. We have a fairly active web site whichs pulls content from a GDBM database. Usually this access is read-only. Occasionally -- to update a counter or information -- we need to open these databases with write access. A sample line to do this: $dbm = dbmopen("facedb", "w"); Usually, this is never a problem. However, during heavy load -- when more people than usual are updating data or counters and thus needing to write to this database -- the dbmopen() call fails with the following error: "Warning: dbmopen_gdbm(itemsdb): 10 [Can't be writer], 11 [Resource temporarily unavailable] in db.php on line 5" The PHP documentation page for dbmopen() states: "Note that PHP does its own file locking in addition to any file locking that may be done by the DBM library itself." Is this true? If so, why would we be encountering this bug? I guess the first question, which I might not be qualified to answer: is this a GDBM problem, or a PHP problem? Would switching to another database style help? Can we trap this error and try again? Enough question. That's my bug report. -Cabel -- Edit bug report at: http://bugs.php.net/?id=13630&edit=1