For advisory file record locking to be effective, all processes that have access to a file must cooperate and use the advisory mechanism before doing I/O on the file. Enforcement-mode record locking is important when it cannot be assumed that all processes are cooperating. For example, if one user uses an editor to update a file at the same time that a second user executes another process that updates the same file and if only one of the two processes is using advisory locking, the processes are not cooperating. Enforcement-mode record locking would protect against accidental collisions.
Secondly, advisory record locking requires a process using locking to bracket each I/O operation with lock (or test) and unlock operations. With enforcement-mode file and record locking, a process can lock the file once and unlock when all I/O operations have been completed. Enforcement-mode record locking provides a base that can be enhanced; for example, with sharable locks. That is, the mechanism could be enhanced to allow a process to lock a file so other processes could read it, but none of them could write it.
Mandatory locks were omitted for several reasons:
1.
Mandatory lock setting was done by multiplexing the set-group-ID bit in most implementations; this was confusing, at best.
2.
The relationship to file truncation as supported in 4.2 BSD was not well specified.
3.
Any publicly readable file could be locked by anyone. Many historical implementations keep the password database in a publicly readable file. A malicious user could thus prohibit logins. Another possibility would be to hold open a long-distance telephone line.
4.
Some demand-paged historical implementations offer memory mapped files, and enforcement cannot be done on that type of file.
Since sleeping on a region is interrupted with any signal, alarm() may be used to provide a timeout facility in applications requiring it. This is useful in deadlock detection. Since implementation of full deadlock detection is not always feasible, the [EDEADLK] error was made optional.