Date:        Thu, 16 Sep 1999 17:39:46 +0200
    From:        Guenther Grau <Guenther.Grau@bosch.com>
    Message-ID:  <37E10F42.6DEBC45C@bosch.com>

  | The unlink() just needed to lock the directory and all other tools
  | trying to access this directory would fail to open it.

And those that already have it open, and are part way through reading it?

A truly useless process might do something like...

	dfd = opendir(...);
	dp = readdir(dfd);
	sleep(3600 * 100);
	dp = readdir(dfd);

You can't really prevent anyone else from creating or removing files in
the directory (consider /tmp ...) for 100 hours or you have a huge DOS
potential.   Nor is there any rational way in the current model to
signal to this process that its scan of the directory has broken.

kre