Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759069Ab0GVRWN (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:22:13 -0400 Received: from magus.merit.edu ([198.108.1.13]:39310 "EHLO magus.merit.edu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754943Ab0GVRWJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:22:09 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 583 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:22:09 EDT Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:12:24 -0400 From: Jim Rees To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Jeremy Allison , Volker.Lendecke@sernet.de, David Howells , Jan Engelhardt , linux-cifs@vger.kernel.org, linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org, samba-technical@lists.samba.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH 02/18] xstat: Add a pair of system calls to make extended file stats available [ver #6] Message-ID: <20100722171224.GA8630@merit.edu> References: <20100715021709.5544.64506.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <20100715021712.5544.44845.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <30448.1279800887@redhat.com> <20100722162712.GB10352@jeremy-laptop> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 631 Lines: 15 Linus Torvalds wrote: I personally think that Unix ctime is insane. There is no real reason why "write()" should change mtime, but "chmod" changes ctime. It was just a random decision way back when... I believe it was done that way so "dump" could backup just the inode and not the data if only the inode had changed. Full history here: http://blog.plover.com/Unix/ctime.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/