A related issue is the case where a program such as "integrit" updates the atime of all files in /bin and /usr (and elsewhere) each day.
For example, a popcon submission on one of my systems (a few months ago) looks like: POPULARITY-CONTEST-0 TIME:1108386306 ID:[...] 1108386315 1089347334 grep /bin/egrep 1108386313 1089346922 findutils /usr/bin/find 1108386306 1089347334 shellutils /bin/date 1108386306 1089346951 popularity-contest /usr/sbin/popularity-contest . . . 1108384616 1089346922 netcat /usr/bin/netcat 1108384616 1089346922 ncurses-bin /usr/bin/captoinfo 1108384616 1089346922 joe /usr/bin/jpico 1108384615 1089346921 whiptail /usr/bin/whiptail 0 0 zlib1g <NOFILES> 0 0 xprt-common <NOFILES> . . . END-POPULARITY-CONTEST-0 TIME:1108386320 [This submission was generated by the popularity-contest package in Woody (1.3-1.1), but as far as I have been able to find, the issue the issue is still there at least through the Sarge version (1.28).] The issue is that all the atime values fall in a short range (e.g. 1108386315 - 1108384615 = 1700 sec < 30 minutes) and occur just before the runtime of popularity-contest itself. So, my point is that if you add special handling for the noatime case, you might want to also handle the "atimes are all too close together" problem at the same time. (In addition eventually dealing with this situation the program, it would also be nice to know if the popcon maintainers would or would not like to have systems affected by this problem participating in the program. Is it more helpful or harmful for these systems to be included given their bogus "vote" counts?) Nathan ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nathan Stratton Treadway - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Mid-Atlantic region Ray Ontko & Co. - Software consulting services - http://www.ontko.com/ GPG Key: http://www.ontko.com/~nathanst/gpg_key.txt ID: 1023D/ECFB6239 Key fingerprint = 6AD8 485E 20B9 5C71 231C 0C32 15F3 ADCD ECFB 6239 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]