Re: [PATCH 00/23] per device dirty throttling -v8

Ingo Molnar
2007-08-05T12:56:49Z

* Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:

> > > we can move from atime to noatime by default on FC8 with
> > > appropriate release note warnings and having a couple of betas to
> > > find out what other than mutt goes boom.
> >
> > btw., Mutt does not go boom, i use it myself. It works just fine and
> > notices new mails even on a noatime,nodiratime filesystem.
>
> Configuration dependant, and also mutt and the shell will misreport
> new mail with noatime on the mail spool. The shell should probably use
> inotify of course but that change has to be made.

just to quote from this same email thread:

| I too use mutt and noatime,nodiratime everywhere (same 10 year-old
| thinko), and the only side effect is that when I have a new mail, it
| is reported in all of my xterms until I read it, clearly something I
| can live with (and sometimes it's even desirable).
|
| In fact, mutt is pretty good at this. It updates atime and ctime
| itself as soon as it opens the mbox, so the shell is happy and only
| reports "you have mail" afterwards.

Ingo