Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759563Ab0GVSpQ (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:45:16 -0400 Received: from mail-yx0-f174.google.com ([209.85.213.174]:54970 "EHLO mail-yx0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756634Ab0GVSpJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:45:09 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type; b=HOLl1cc0/S5JwUbhKjZ+otkZkIvoMeBB+D9A7Hfr9zApjqDxpFqJ8V8P1gLSShS96K LErUlp4nYqs2YlPJ8LLRNm+jve6w4hGYF4E9ScujJbakGVV3yZb/0vRjTWB4Er4DCzWL FnERKpgqsvbKy5P9EVMpKNYCi3x8xopQveCPA= MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <4C488C41.60002@panasas.com> 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> <4C488C41.60002@panasas.com> Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:45:07 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH 02/18] xstat: Add a pair of system calls to make extended file stats available [ver #6] From: Greg Freemyer To: Benny Halevy Cc: Linus Torvalds , Jan Engelhardt , Jeremy Allison , Volker.Lendecke@sernet.de, David Howells , 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 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1497 Lines: 33 On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Benny Halevy wrote: > On Jul. 22, 2010, 20:24 +0300, Linus Torvalds wrote: >> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 10:03 AM, Jan Engelhardt wrote: >>> >>> I beg to differ. ctime is not completely useless. It reflects changes on >>> the inode for when you don't you change the content. >> >> Uh. Yes. Except that why is file metadata really different from file >> data? Most people really don't care. And a lot of people have asked >> for creation dates - and I seriously doubt that Windows people >> complain a lot about the fact that there you have mtime for metadata >> changes too. >> >> The point being that Unix ctime semantics certainly have well-defined >> semantics, but they are in no way "better" than having a real creation >> time, and are often worse. > > Yeah, having create time would be important. > That said, having a non user-settable modify timestamp is crucial > for quickly determining whether a file has changed. How would "cp --archive" and a host of backup/restore tools work without user-settable modify timestamps? Or are you proposing another timestamp? I do computer forensics, I like timestamps, but enough is enough. Greg -- 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/