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I noticed when a file is executed on Windows (.exe or .dll), it is locked and cannot be deleted, moved or modified.
Linux, on the other hand, does not lock executing files and you can delete, move, or modify them.
Why does Windows lock when Linux does not? Is there an advantage to locking?
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This is because Linux usually doesn't automatically lock open files. However, Linux supports two kinds of file locks: advisory locks and mandatory locks.
File locking is a mechanism that restricts access to a computer file, or to a region of a file, by allowing only one user or process to modify or delete it at a specific time and to prevent reading of the file while it's being modified or deleted.
File locking is a data management feature that restricts other users from changing a specific file. This allows only one user or process access to this file at any given time. This is to prevent the problem of interceding updates on the same files.
Lock files should be stored within the /var/lock directory structure. Lock files for devices and other resources shared by multiple applications, such as the serial device lock files that were originally found in either /usr/spool/locks or /usr/spool/uucp , must now be stored in /var/lock .
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.
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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.
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