# Turso (limbo): "database is locked (5)" when the same file is opened from another process
## The problem
Opening a Turso (limbo) database in one process locks it for writes, so opening the same file in another process - e.g. with `sqlite3` - fails with `Parse error: database is locked (5)` on any write. Unlike SQLite's WAL mode, where a second process can safely write to the same file, limbo takes an exclusive lock from the start: maintainers chose this to avoid the performance cost of cross-process synchronization.
## The verified fix
This is a documented limitation, not a bug: limbo takes an exclusive lock on the database file and does not support multi-process access (see the limitations section of `docs/manual.md`). Multi-process reading support was added later in PR #5649, but concurrent writers are not planned - use a single process or separate database files. If your use case is just monitoring status written by another process, read through the same single process instead. Source: https://github.com/tursodatabase/turso/issues/769