On 8/9/07, Ralf Corsepius rc040203@freenet.de wrote:
IMO, disabling atime by default, just because 99% of applications, don't use it, is short-sighted. It basically ditches a fundamental feature of unix filessystems and converts there behavior to "DOS'ish".
If it's such a fundamental feature that should be kept around, why have NFS optimization documents always recommended disabling atime updates especially on servers where there is a lot of throughput?
Just because it's a fundamental feature doesn't mean that it has to be used. Fundamentally, my CPU can run at 2GHz all of the time that doesn't mean that it should. If 99% of the applications can do without it and probably 99% of the people can as well, why not go ahead and get disable it.
Those that need atime will eventually figure out how to turn it on. The potential for a better user experience as well possible power savings seems to outweigh the fundamental feature argument.
James Hubbard