Re: [BUG] mtime&ctime updated when it should not

[Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>]

On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 08:35:27PM +0200, Herbert Poetzl wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 08:11:13PM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> >   Hello,
> > 
> >   one user pointed my attention to the fact that when the write fails
> > (for example when the user quota is exceeded) the modification time is
> > still updated (the problem appears both in 2.4 and 2.6). According to
> > SUSv3 that should not happen because the specification says that mtime
> > and ctime should be marked for update upon a successful completition
> > of a write (not that it would forbid updating the times in other cases
> > but I find it at least a bit nonintuitive).
> >   The easiest fix would be probably to "backup" the times at the
> > beginning of the write and restore the original values when the write
> > fails (simply not updating the times would require more surgery because
> > for example vmtruncate() is called when the write fails and it also
> > updates the times).
> >   So should I write the patch or is the current behaviour considered
> > correct?
> 
> hmm, what if the request only partially succeeds?
> 
> for example echo "five" >/tmp/x will create /tmp/x
> if inode limit permits it, but will leave it empty
> if the space limit does not ...
> 
> personally I wouldn't care about the modification
> time on such a quota fault ...

At least you would know when the truncate happened, even if the write didn't
complete successfully.