Return-Path: Received: from borg.medozas.de ([188.40.89.202]:50444 "EHLO borg.medozas.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751555Ab0GVPql (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:46:41 -0400 Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:46:39 +0200 (CEST) From: Jan Engelhardt To: Linus Torvalds cc: 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 Subject: Re: [PATCH 02/18] xstat: Add a pair of system calls to make extended file stats available [ver #6] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <20100715021709.5544.64506.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <20100715021712.5544.44845.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <30448.1279800887@redhat.com> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 On Thursday 2010-07-22 17:14, Linus Torvalds wrote: >>> >>> It is?  It's called crtime in Ext4.  st_btime, however, would be compatible >>> with BSD's stat, and Samba would just use it by way of autoconf magic if it >>> appeared. >> >> Samba has the following check: >> # recent FreeBSD, NetBSD have creation timestamps called birthtime: >> AC_CHECK_MEMBERS([struct stat.st_birthtimespec.tv_nsec]) >> AC_CHECK_MEMBERS([struct stat.st_birthtime], AC_CHECK_MEMBERS([struct stat.st_birthtimensec])) >> >> and the supporting code around that. "birth" might also be >> where the "b" comes from :-) > >Oh wow. And all of this just convinces me that we should _not_ do any >of this, since clearly it's all totally useless and people can't even >agree on a name. > >Let's wait five years and see if there is actually any consensus on it >being needed and used at all, rather than rush into something just >because "we can". There just is no way currently to store creation times. Abusing ctimes for write-once archives also stops working once you rsync it from one place to another. (Which brings me to the side question of why the ctime isn't settable through futimesnat.)