Re: [PATCH] O_NOATIME support

Matthias Schniedermeyer
2004-06-14T22:09:50Z

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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