From: Steve French Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH 0/6] Enhanced file stat system call Date: Thu, 5 May 2016 21:00:18 -0500 Message-ID: References: <20160429125736.23636.47874.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <5680195.kS2oylQXhI@wuerfel> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: David Howells , linux-fsdevel , linux-afs@vger.kernel.org, "linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org" , samba-technical , LKML , "linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org" , Deepa Dinamani To: Arnd Bergmann Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 5:54 PM, Steve French wrote: > On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 8:46 AM, Arnd Bergmann wrote: >> On Friday 29 April 2016 13:57:36 David Howells wrote: >>> struct statx *buffer); >>> >>> This is an enhanced file stat function that provides a number of useful >>> features, in summary: >>> >>> (1) More information: creation time, data version number, inode >>> generation >>> number and flags. A subset of these is available through a number of >>> filesystems (such as CIFS, NFS, AFS, Ext4 and BTRFS). >>> >> >> I have a question about birthtime/creationtime: As we are gaining a way >> to read this, should we also provide a way to update it using a new >> variant >> of the utimensat syscall in order to have 'cp -a' create an identical >> copy, >> or is the idea that this is defined as the time that is particular copy >> of the inode was created? >> >> I've discussed this with Deepa in the past, as she is driving the >> convertion of the inode timestamps to timespec64 now, and we will >> need a new version of utimensat for her work as well. I can see good >> reasons either way (allowing updates of btime or disallowing them). > It would help interop with Windows (and presumably Mac) if birth time can be updated -- Thanks, Steve