[PATCH v2 1/2] relatime: Make relatime behaviour smarter

[Matthew Garrett <mjg@redhat.com>]

Make relatime smarter
    
Allow atime to be updated once per day even with relatime. This lets
utilities like tmpreaper (which delete files based on last access time)
continue working.

---

Subset of Ingo's original patch, rediffed against current git

diff --git a/fs/inode.c b/fs/inode.c
index 0487ddb..348fa16 100644
--- a/fs/inode.c
+++ b/fs/inode.c
@@ -1179,6 +1179,41 @@ sector_t bmap(struct inode * inode, sector_t block)
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL(bmap);
 
+/*
+ * Relative atime updates frequency (default: 1 day):
+ */
+int relatime_interval __read_mostly = 24*60*60;
+
+/*
+ * With relative atime, only update atime if the
+ * previous atime is earlier than either the ctime or
+ * mtime.
+ */
+static int relatime_need_update(struct inode *inode, struct timespec now)
+{
+	/*
+	 * Is mtime younger than atime? If yes, update atime:
+	 */
+	if (timespec_compare(&inode->i_mtime, &inode->i_atime) >= 0)
+		return 1;
+	/*
+	 * Is ctime younger than atime? If yes, update atime:
+	 */
+	if (timespec_compare(&inode->i_ctime, &inode->i_atime) >= 0)
+		return 1;
+
+	/*
+	 * Is the previous atime value older than the update interval?
+	 * If yes, update atime:
+	 */
+	if ((long)(now.tv_sec - inode->i_atime.tv_sec) >= relatime_interval)
+		return 1;
+	/*
+	 * Good, we can skip the atime update:
+	 */
+	return 0;
+}
+
 /**
  *	touch_atime	-	update the access time
  *	@mnt: mount the inode is accessed on
@@ -1206,17 +1241,12 @@ void touch_atime(struct vfsmount *mnt, struct dentry *dentry)
 		goto out;
 	if ((mnt->mnt_flags & MNT_NODIRATIME) && S_ISDIR(inode->i_mode))
 		goto out;
-	if (mnt->mnt_flags & MNT_RELATIME) {
-		/*
-		 * With relative atime, only update atime if the previous
-		 * atime is earlier than either the ctime or mtime.
-		 */
-		if (timespec_compare(&inode->i_mtime, &inode->i_atime) < 0 &&
-		    timespec_compare(&inode->i_ctime, &inode->i_atime) < 0)
-			goto out;
-	}
 
 	now = current_fs_time(inode->i_sb);
+
+	if (mnt->mnt_flags & MNT_RELATIME)
+		if (!relatime_need_update(inode, now))
+			goto out;
 	if (timespec_equal(&inode->i_atime, &now))
 		goto out;
 
-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59@srcf.ucam.org