Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2024 12:43:33 -0800 From: "Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)" <lyndon@orthanc.ca> To: Olivier Certner <olce@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: noatime on ufs2 Message-ID: <a5e38bfbabd37084@orthanc.ca> In-Reply-To: <6714298.qJWK8QVVMX@ravel> References: <ZZqmmM-6f606bLJx@int21h> <CAGMYy3vsSD7HHtGxYXJn%2Busr8GCOd-0Xe1crs-Nx=qw-bYJ6HA@mail.gmail.com> <2eabfb91-afc3-47f7-98b9-1a1791ae6e7d@app.fastmail.com> <6714298.qJWK8QVVMX@ravel>
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Olivier Certner writes: > I've never found any compelling reason in most uses to enable "atime", e= xcept > perhaps local mail but as addressed in other answers it is a relic of t= he pa > st mostly irrelevant today. And its drawbacks are well known and can be= seri > ous. When UNIX ran on PDP-11s and disk pack sizes were measured in the tens of megabytes, atime was very helpful in determining which files were likely candidates for archiving to tape when the disk was getting full. And in the Usenet days it was common to mount /var/spool/news noatime, which eliminated a *lot* of meta-info write traffic. These days, other than /var/mail, I can't think of a compelling use for it. I've been running my Plan 9 systems with atime disabled ever since fossil arrived (decades) without any impact. I don't see any issue with making noatime the default. For those that must have it, /var/mail can be carved out as a distinct filesystem and mounted appropriately. --lyndon
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