From: Jim Rees Subject: Re: [PATCH 02/18] xstat: Add a pair of system calls to make extended file stats available [ver #6] Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:12:24 -0400 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 Cc: Jeremy Allison , Volker.Lendecke-3ekOc4rQMZmzQB+pC5nmwQ@public.gmane.org, David Howells , Jan Engelhardt , linux-cifs-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org, linux-nfs-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org, samba-technical-w/Ol4Ecudpl8XjKLYN78aQ@public.gmane.org, linux-kernel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org, viro-RmSDqhL/yNMiFSDQTTA3OLVCufUGDwFn@public.gmane.org, linux-fsdevel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org, linux-ext4-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: Linus Torvalds Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-nfs-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org 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-nfs" in the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html