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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Backup of a live filesystem revisited
Message-ID: <7461@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-86 00:06:13 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7461
Posted: Wed Dec 31 00:06:13 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Dec-86 00:06:13 EST
References: <4760002@hpirs.HP> <1226@ho95e.UUCP> <7446@utzoo.UUCP>, <215@mcdsun.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 14

> >Another wart of dump programs that go through the filesystem is that the
> >access time of files becomes largely useless, since the dump program ends
> >up updating it on every backup.
> 
> Maybe I'm missing something, but why not just use utime(2) to reset the
> st_atime and st_mtime fields, that's what bru does...

Then you lose st_ctime, which is infrequently used by humans, but is the
field that *backups* ought to be based on, since it captures things like
permission changes that don't alter st_mtime.  There are other things that
st_ctime is useful for also, albeit they are unusual.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry