Re: [PATCH] O_NOATIME support

[Matthias Schniedermeyer <ms@citd.de>]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2004 at 06:12:59PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Jun 11, 2004, Cesar Eduardo Barros <cesarb@nitnet.com.br> wrote:
> 
> > int O_NOATIME  	Macro
> >   If this bit is set, read will not update the access time of the file.
> >   See File Times. This is used by programs that do backups, so that
> >   backing a file up does not count as reading it. Only the owner of the
> >   file or the superuser may use this bit.
> 
> IMHO it's a bad idea to enable the owner of the file to avoid changing
> the atime of their files.  I've heard more than once about the atime
> bit being used to as proof that a user had actually seen the contents
> of a file although s/he claimed s/he hadn't.  If it was root-only,
> atime could still be used for the same purpose, and would enable
> backups with tools that accessed the filesystem through the FS layer,
> as opposed to though the block layer, to keep such proof unchanged.

man mount
/noatime
-> You can disable updating the atime for the whole filesystem.

man utimes/touch -a
-> You can modify "at will" the atime & mtime of a file.


Or in other words, nothing you can't already manipulate at will today.



Bis denn

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