Eric,
 
  you can  count us in  the backbone and  update our server  automatically. We
also  try  to  autolog  the  server   every  hour  in  case  there  isn't  any
persistingproblems like  disk full  when listserv should  shutdown immediately
and stay  so. I guess that  only vacations might  cause delays, if both  I and
Petri decide to take it at the same time :-).
 
One thing  that concerns me  with these peered  filelists and updates  is what
happens if  one postmaster at  the other end of  a large peer  network updates
peered files before he has received the  latest version from the other end due
delays. The locking  of files isn't feasible because it  would triple the time
needed for  update in the  worst case. I think  a simple method  for detecting
this hopefully rare incident would be enough:
 
A) Keep an  automatically assigned version number with each  peer file. When a
   file with a version number different than current + 1 arrives both are held
   or  bumbed to  postmaster and  a  warning sent  to the  originator and  the
   postmaster of the problem site to manually correct the situation.
B) Try  to send an  advance warning  of the update  to the postmasters  of all
   servers you  are trying to update  using messages. This could  be best done
   with a  relay style  interserver message protocoll  e.g. a  special command
   which  sends a  single  line freeform  message to  all  postmasters of  the
   server.
This feature might  be usefull also for  real people who are  trying to inform
   postmasters of some  particular node of some urgent situation  like a loop.
   This feature need not be 100%  reliable and could be turned off selectively
   but it would help getting postmasters  rapidly informed by remote users and
   servers not knowing all postmasters of  a given node (do you still remember
   all the hidden postmasters you might have?). "ALERTOP message" might be the
   hypersimple syntax but the special peerupdate warnings might be trapped and
   shown only if they concern that server in the same manner you'll discard
   unnecessary PUT commands.
 
Hopefully we'll have a  multiwindow (might be real fun with  VM/SP rel. 5 :-))
syntax oriented  listeditor to manage  those files without having  to purchase
the VM/Prolog :-)
 
Harri