A Lock Is Only as Good as Its Release

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 20:40:00 -0700

Every “build a lock on Redis” tutorial spends its time on acquisition: SET key value NX PX 30000, one winner, done. The release gets one line, DEL key. That line is where most of the lock bugs I’ve had in ePHPm lived. Over about three months the same mistake showed up in three places. First the native session handler, then two of the Composer wrapper packages, and finally the cluster. Each time it wore a slightly different costume.

Locking on Luther Monson

A Lock Is Only as Good as Its Release