Patrick O'Lone suggests the following idea which sounds interesting to add as an optional mode of Cache_Lite class. (still not tested in the Cache_Lite context) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you use the flags: ignore_user_abort(true); $fd = dio_open($szFilename, O_CREATE | O_EXCL | O_TRUNC | O_WRONLY, 0644); if (is_resource($fd)) { dio_fcntl($fd, F_SETLKW, array('type' => F_WRLCK)); dio_write($fd, $szBuffer); dio_fcntl($fd, F_SETLK, array('type' => F_UNLCK)); dio_close($fd); } ignore_user_abort(false); Only the first process will attempt to create a file. Additional processes will see that a file already exists (at the system level), and will fail. Another thing to note is that the file descriptor must be opened using dio_open(), and certain features, like fgets() won't work with it. If your just doing a raw write, dio_write() should be just fine. The dio_read() function should be used like: $fd = dio_open($szFilename, O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK, 0644); if (is_resource($fd)) { dio_fcntl($fd, F_SETLKW, array('type' => F_RDLCK)); $szBuffer = dio_read($fd, filesize($szFilename)); dio_fcntl($fd, F_SETLK, array('type' => F_UNLCK)); dio_close($fd); } You still use locking to ensure that a write process can finish before another attempts to read the file. We also set non-blocking mode in read mode so that multiple readers can access the same resource at the same time. NOTE: Direct I/O support must be compiled into PHP for these features to work (--enable-dio). -------------------------------------------------------------------------