Since it's been a while since I've written any erlang, I'll direct you to pages 112-114 of the (excellent) O'Reilly erlang text by Cesarini and Thompson, which discusses how to deal with race conditions and deadlocks and goes on to say they're extremely rare if you follow standard practices, including mnesia/ETS and OTP behaviors. You have to worry more about mailboxes filling up, and sending large messages between actors, stuff like that.