atimes

Jason jkenner@mindspring.com
Sun, 14 Jan 2001 16:39:58 +0000


Ken Bowley wrote:
> What do you use atimes for?  Besides telling the last time something
> noticed that a file was there?  I can understand the need for ctime and
> mtime, but I just can't think of a real use for atime due to the number of
> things that can update it.

With atime, every time you run "sync", your drive(s?) will make
noise... even if there's nothing to update, because now there is (you
just accessed sync...)

One side effect you may notice because of this and similar things is
that a drive may actually be able to spin down... Im trying the
noatime option next reboot (or at least, next time I am able to kill
all the processes residing on the /maxtor partition) to see how it
changes things.

-- 
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