Lock files are used for several reasons, but in a nut shell they are
files that are written in a certain place known to the a program to let
other instances of the program (or other programs) know that it is
running already.
OR a lock file often times is used to let programs know that a file is
being use and not to touch it till the lock files is gone again.

Anyway, every once in a while a program can crash or exit in such a way
that a lock file does get deleted.  When that happens, bad things can
happen.  Removing the lock file(s) clears up any problem(s) instantly
you might be having.   Just make sure the lock file isn't being used
first, or bad things can happen.

Brian Cluff

On Thu, 2002-10-17 at 23:45, Michael Havens wrote:
> On Thursday 17 October 2002 11:24 pm, der.hans wrote:
> > Am 17. Oct, 2002 schwätzte Michael Havens so:
> > > That was bizzare! I shut down and upon restarting (then opening kmail)
> > > got a message that kmail was already running under pid 1204. I shut down
> > > three more times (no juice flowing through the CPU) before that problem
> > > cleaned up (went away). Strange! I even ran the integrity check once!
> >
> > That indicates that Kmail uses a --------LOCK------- file and that the lock 
> file didn't
> > get removed. Bad Kmail, bad, bad.
> >
> > ciao,
> >
> > der.hans
> 
> -- 
> :-)~Mike~(-:
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