Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 20:00:03 -0700 (PDT) From: "Eugene M. Kim" <gene@nttmcl.com> To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: docs/30675: `noatime' should be discouraged on /var as well Message-ID: <200109200300.f8K303S26509@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR docs/30675; it has been noted by GNATS. From: "Eugene M. Kim" <gene@nttmcl.com> To: Chern Lee <chern@FreeBSD.org> Cc: "Eugene M. Kim" <gene@nttmcl.com>, freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: docs/30675: `noatime' should be discouraged on /var as well Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 19:55:41 -0700 Chern, Your observation is correct. Sendmail does not explicitly manipulate the mtime nor the atime. What happens is, when sendmail has something to deliver to a mailbox, it just opens the mailbox file as write-only. This operation updates only the mtime of the mailbox, and its atime is preserved. Result: the mailbox now has an mtime more recent than its atime, which is the indication of new mail. See also tcsh(1), under the description of `mail' variable. Regards, Eugene A mail-reader resets that condition by reading from the mailbox. On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 05:52:32PM -0700, Chern Lee wrote: > A quick grep -Ri "atime" /usr/src/contrib/sendmail/ shows that sendmail > does not use file atime's for any operations. Mail program often use > *modification timestamps* (mtime), which is not changed by the noatime > option. > > Generally speaking, mtime is updated every time a file's contents is > changed, atime is changed whenever a file is accessed. > > If my memory serves me correctly, postfix does not make use of atime > either--I safely run a postfix server with noatime enabled on /var. > > - chern > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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