From owner-freebsd-isp  Mon Aug 26 14:45:54 1996
Return-Path: owner-isp
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA18464
          for isp-outgoing; Mon, 26 Aug 1996 14:45:54 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from root.com (implode.root.com [198.145.90.17])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA18459
          for <freebsd-isp@freebsd.org>; Mon, 26 Aug 1996 14:45:51 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by root.com (8.7.5/8.6.5) with SMTP id OAA15639; Mon, 26 Aug 1996 14:45:25 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199608262145.OAA15639@root.com>
X-Authentication-Warning: implode.root.com: Host localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol
To: Charles Henrich <henrich@crh.cl.msu.edu>
cc: nate@mt.sri.com, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Anyone using ccd (FreeBSD disk striper) for news 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 26 Aug 1996 17:14:16 EDT."
             <199608262114.RAA13955@crh.cl.msu.edu> 
From: David Greenman <dg@root.com>
Reply-To: dg@root.com
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 14:45:25 -0700
Sender: owner-isp@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

>In lists.freebsd.isp you write:
>
>>> > > What I want is a solution which postpones the writes until hell freezes
>>> > > over.  Or, better yet, doesn't do them at all.
>>> >
>>> > Use MFS for your news spool partition. :)
>>> >
>>> > You *have* to write them down sometime unless you have gigabytes of
>>> > battery backed memory.
>>>
>>> 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.
>
>>> 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. :)
>
>Im looking at replacing our news server with a huge FreeBSD system, and was
>wondering why not have a fstab options (noatime,nomtime) that disables the
>writing of [AM]TIME data?  That shouldnt be *too* difficult to add..

   I've already written the code. There was a bug that was causing the flag to
not be propagated correctly in the kernel that I haven't had time to fix. I'm
starting to get interested in this again for wcarchive, so perhaps I'll dig
out the changes in the next few days.

-DG

David Greenman
Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project