Disabling atime

[James Hubbard]

On 8/9/07, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> IMO, disabling atime by default, just because 99% of applications, don't
> use it, is short-sighted. It basically ditches a fundamental feature of
> unix filessystems and converts there behavior to "DOS'ish".

If it's such a fundamental feature that should be kept around, why
have NFS optimization documents always recommended disabling atime
updates especially on servers where there is a lot of throughput?

Just because it's a fundamental feature doesn't mean that it has to be
used. Fundamentally, my CPU can run at 2GHz all of the time that
doesn't mean that it should.  If 99% of the applications can do
without it and probably 99% of the people can as well, why not go
ahead and get disable it.

Those that need atime will eventually figure out how to turn it on.
The potential for a better user experience as well possible power
savings seems to outweigh the fundamental feature argument.

James Hubbard