Distributed Systems Shibboleths
Am I missing why a distributed lock is an impossibility? The problem stated is that a partitioned node can't know it has lost the lock, but this is only an issue if there is a way to lose the lock short of returning it.<p>Which I guess is to say: what difference is there between a lease with an infinite timeout unless manually returned, and a "lock"?<p>Certainly the system deadlocks under partition but I'm not sure why that makes this "impossible".