On 8/29/23 07:22, Greg Wooledge wrote:
On Tue, Aug 29, 2023 at 11:10:17AM +0200, Michael wrote:
On Tuesday, 29 August 2023 03:56:55 CEST, Greg Wooledge wrote:
The problem is, most Debian systems are set up to mount the core file
systems with "relatime". This means you don't have a record of the
last time each file was accessed, so you can't ask the computer which
files were most recently opened.
hm...
i was curious about that and read the man page for 'mount(8)', in section
FILESYSTEM-INDEPENDENT MOUNT OPTIONS i found the following:
relatime
Update inode access times relative to modify or change time.
Access time is only updated if the previous access time was
earlier than the current modify or change time. [...]
so my understanding is, that access time is indeed updated if 'relatime' is
used as a mount option. to prevent updating access times 'noatime' should be
used.
It's changed *only* under the specific circumstance where the file has
been modified since it was last read. If the file hasn't been written to
(or metadata changed), atime isn't updated.
So, imagine there's a doorbell.au file somewhere in Gene's file system,
and that this file has been played, once in a while, for several years.
It hasn't been *modified* in all that time. It's a very static file.
But every once in a while, something opens it and reads it.
In that situation, the mtime on the file is going to be "whenever it
was created" (close enough for this discussion), and the atime is going
to be "whenever it was first played", perhaps 5 or 10 or 20 years ago.
Even though it was just played a few days ago.
Long story short, sorting files by atime isn't going to reveal it.
Unless of course Gene's file systems are mounted with an overriding
option, and he's getting full historic atime behavior.
That would be nice, but I expect it would also be quite speed damaging...
.
Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/>
