--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/common/linuxlockfile.h	Mon Jul 14 12:46:47 2014 +0200
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+/**
+ * @file  linuxlockfile.h
+ * @brief Linux specific functions for lock file handling.
+ * @details Functions to handle procsss specific lock files, these are
+ * only used on GNU Linux as on windows different mechanisms are
+ * utilized to ensure only a single instance runs at a time.
+ */
+
+#ifndef LINUXLOCKFILE_H
+#define LINUXLOCKFILE_H
+
+#ifdef __cplusplus
+extern "C" {
+#endif
+
+/**
+ * @brief create a lockfile
+ * @details create and lock a lockfile containing the pid of the
+ * current process.  fcntl is used for locking, to work in most cases
+ * (e.g. NFS).
+ * @param[in] path to the lockfile
+ * @returns the file descriptor of the lockfile or -1 on error
+ */
+int open_lockfile(char *path);
+
+/**
+ * @brief close a lockfile
+ * @details unlock and close a lockfile for the given file descriptor.
+ * @param[in] path to the lockfile
+ * @returns the file descriptor of the lockfile or -1 on error
+ */
+void close_lockfile(int fd);
+
+#ifdef __cplusplus
+}
+#endif
+
+#endif