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From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
Message-Id: <199608262014.PAA01571@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
Subject: Re: Anyone using ccd (FreeBSD disk striper) for news
To: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams)
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 15:14:38 -0500 (CDT)
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        michaelv@mindbender.serv.net, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199608262005.OAA20286@rocky.mt.sri.com> from "Nate Williams" at Aug 26, 96 02:05:12 pm
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> > Why?
> > 
> > Of what practical value or use is writing back data which will never be
> > looked at?
> 
> Maybe I'm confused, but I see the discussion talking about ATIME writes,
> and normal writes, and there being no distinction made between when you
> are talking about one or the other.

Oh, sorry, I thought it was clear that we were talking about useless
metadata writes :-)

> > Think about it:  if you were to unmount your news spool and remount it -ro,
> > nnrpd would continue to work just fine because NOTHING ever looks at the
> > file atime value (which FFS can't/won't modify if you mount -ro)... and if
> > the only reason you are doing an update is to write back the modified atime,
> > what the hell is the value of doing the write?
> 
> POSIX compliancy. :)

Phahff.  Screw POSIX compliancy if it's an optional brokenness and it makes
life better.  DG has mentioned that it's a real problem for him on wcarchive
in the past, too...  and there are some of us who understand the need for
standards compliance but also appreciate that there are times that the rules
can be safely bent.  :-)

> I was under the impression that you didn't even want to write out the
> actual data itself. :)

Well.  Let's see...  Usenet... 90% noise...  you know that might just be a
workable concept.

Only 1/2 :-)

... JG