Re: [PATCH] ext3: Don't update superblock write time when filesystem is read-only

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 02:24:09PM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> On Sat 03-10-09 23:12:38, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> > This avoids updating the superblock write time when we are mounting
> > the root file system read/only but we need to replay the journal; at
> > that point, for people who are east of GMT and who make their clock
> > tick in localtime for Windows bug-for-bug compatibility, and this will
> > cause e2fsck to complain and force a full file system check.
>   Thanks, the patch is queued in my queue already. I just held it for a
> while because Eric also had a valid point - maybe fsck is too strict when
> it forces a full filesystem check just because the superblock write time is
> in future? On a pc-class hw, clocks go often wrong. Even I remember setting
> system clock on my desktop a few hours back because it just gets out of
> sync and I don't run NTP...
>   So I'm not against your patch because it can help in some cases and
> it's not a big deal but I think a proper fix would be in fsck...

Regardless of whether fsck relaxes its check, if the filesystem is
mounted read-only, I don't think the last write time should change...

		     	   	     	  - Ted