Phil,

Tuesday June 05 2018 12:32, you wrote to All:

 PK> I recall a few years ago experiencing a similiar problem with hpt &
 PK> squish msg bases.

At some point in the past I have ran hpt against squish bases without
issue.  But, I have always maintained a strict processing work flow which
ensured that no two things which might alter the message base files would
access them.  By alter, I mean pack or renumber.  Appending to is fine.

For instance, when I did pack message bases, the tosser would never be
running and I made sure to never invoke more than one tosser instance. 
Some possibly use the binkd exec feature and if that is used must at
minimum use the hpt lock feature in the event two instances were spawned in
quick succession...

These days I run JAM but as far as process workflow I go a step further and
kick off processing only by cron job processing at minimum once a minute
and not at all if no nothing is received.  Due to the abundance of space
thanks in part to modern storage I don't bother pack the message bases at
all.  Fidonet can likely grow to the end of its existence and never fill up
the measly 100GB of space allocated to it (currently at 16%).

Take care,

Matt

---