* Alan Cox [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Linux has always been a "POSIX unless its stupid" type of system.  
For the upstream kernel, we should do the right thing -- noatime by 
default -- but allow distros and people that care about rigid 
compliance to easily change the default.

Linux has never been a "suprise your kernel interfaces all just 
changed today" kernel, nor a "gosh you upgraded and didn't notice your 
backups broke" kernel.

HSM uses atime as a _hint_. The only even remotely valid argument is 
Mutt, and even that one could easily be fixed _it is not even installed 
by default on most distros_ and nobody but me uses it ;) [and i've been 
using Mutt on noatime filesystems for years] So basically a single type 
of package and use-case (against tens of thousands of packages) held all 
of Linux desktop IO performance hostage for 10 years, to the tune of a 
20-30-50-100% performance degradation (depending on the workload)? Wow. 

And the atime situation is _so_ obvious, what will we do in the much 
less obvious cases?

	Ingo

--
To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in
the body to majordomo@kvack.org.  For more info on Linux MM,
see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ .
Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@kvack.org"> email@kvack.org </a>