Re: NODIRATIME patch for 2.1.73
Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU)
Sat, 20 Dec 1997 23:13:37 +1100
Russell Coker writes:
> > Hi, Linus. The following patch adds MS_NODIRATIME support to 2.1.73.
> >When a filesystem is mounted with MS_NODIRATIME then reading directories
> >does not change the atime for those directories.
>
> >I've been finding that operations like:
> >% find / -name dummy -ls
> >% sync
>
> >or:
> >% du -s /
> >% sync
>
> >take a long time to do the sync, because the directory atimes are being
> >updated & written. This patch allows me to mount my FS's with nodiratime,
> >and said operations are now much faster.
>
> In what situations would you need to mount a file system with no
> directory atimes but with atimes on files? Why do you need to do this and
> not just use the noatime option that's already in there?
Because I want to record file accesses but I don't care about
directory accesses. When I do a massive find I don't want to wait for
my inodes to sync. I have lots of RAM so a find is *really* fast with
the dcache. I don't like my machine being unusable for 15 seconds or
more while it's syncing.
Regards,
Richard....