Locking Executing Files: Windows does, Linux doesn't. Why?

Linux has a reference-count mechanism, so you can delete the file while it is executing, and it will continue to exist as long as some process (Which previously opened it) has an open handle for it. The directory entry for the file is removed when you delete it, so it cannot be opened any more, but processes already using this file can still use it. Once all processes using this file terminate, the file is deleted automatically.

Windows does not have this capability, so it is forced to lock the file until all processes executing from it have finished.

I believe that the Linux behavior is preferable. There are probably some deep architectural reasons, but the prime (and simple) reason I find most compelling is that in Windows, you sometimes cannot delete a file, you have no idea why, and all you know is that some process is keeping it in use. In Linux it never happens.

As far as I know, linux does lock executables when they're running -- however, it locks the inode. This means that you can delete the "file" but the inode is still on the filesystem, untouched and all you really deleted is a link.

Unix programs use this way of thinking about the filesystem all the time, create a temporary file, open it, delete the name. Your file still exists but the name is freed up for others to use and no one else can see it.

Linux does lock the files. If you try to overwrite a file that's executing you will get "ETXTBUSY" (Text file busy). You can however remove the file, and the kernel will delete the file when the last reference to it is removed. (If the machine wasn't cleanly shutdown, these files are the cause of the "Deleted inode had zero d-time" messages when the filesystem is checked, they weren't fully deleted, because a running process had a reference to them, and now they are.)

This has some major advantages, you can upgrade a process thats running, by deleting the executable, replacing it, then restarting the process. Even init can be upgraded like this, replace the executable, and send it a signal, and it'll re-exec() itself, without requiring a reboot. (THis is normally done automatically by your package management system as part of it's upgrade)

Under windows, replacing a file that's in use appears to be a major hassle, generally requiring a reboot to make sure no processes are running.

There can be some problems, such as if you have an extremely large logfile, and you remove it, but forget to tell the process that was logging to that file to reopen the file, it'll hold the reference, and you'll wonder why your disk didn't suddenly get a lot more free space.

You can also use this trick under linux for temporary files. open the file, delete it, then continue to use the file. When your process exits (for no matter what reason -- even power failure), the file will be deleted.

Programs like lsof and fuser (or just poking around in /proc//fd) can show you what processes have files open that no longer have a name.