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From: daveb@llama.rtech.UUCP ("It takes a clear mind to make it")
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Uses for access time, stuff in inodes
Message-ID: <2059@rtech.UUCP>
Date: 6 May 88 06:44:52 GMT
References: <3672@lynx.UUCP> <10613@steinmetz.ge.com> <577@minya.UUCP>
Sender: news@rtech.UUCP
Reply-To: daveb@rtech.UUCP ("It takes a clear mind to make it")
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Organization: Relational Technology, Inc. Alameda, CA
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One problem with the access (and modify time) fields is that when you
are running in SV's O_SYNC mode, you end up doing two disk writes all
the time: once for the data, and once for the inode.  This can be
frightfully expensive.  It would be nice if there were some way for
O_SYNCed files to avoid this: maybe just defer the access/mod time
write until the file is closed.

In another issue, a number of us here have wanted another chunk of info
in the inode for a long time.  We call it the "ratfink" field, which
would contain the real user id of the last process that modified the
file.  This would make it a lot easier to track some things down...

-dB
{amdahl, cpsc6a, mtxinu, ptsfa, sun, hoptoad}!rtech!daveb daveb@rtech.uucp