Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP 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