<snip old stuff> > I consider Ara the definitive source especially when it comes to > flock'ing NFS mounted files, see for example: > > http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/97211 > > For the low profile solution check out > > http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/File.html#M002576 > > Kind regards > > robert Thanks Robert. So if I'm editing this file, the basic idea here is to do this: require 'lockfile' Lockfile('lock', :retries => 0) do # edit my file here end And that's it? I'm assuming this will also work on a non-NFS file system as well. That will do just fine. Mike B.