Disabling atime

[Benjamin Lewis]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>>>> I'd expect the RedHat-style approach to this to be: add some file
>>>> under /etc/sysconfig like mount-options that contains options that can
>>>> be merged with the ones in /etc/fstab and all of the magic
>>>> automounting bits (this is probably as important on usb flash drives
>>>> as anywhere).
>>>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>> There is something which leap out at me as soon a I saw this: the kind
>>> of person who _needs_ atime, knows how to set it. The majority of
>>> people
>>> - especially the home use - has little or no use for it whatsoever.
>>
>> The majority of people will see a performance boost they will
>> appreciate regardless of whether they know about atime or not.
>
> But whether it is a noticeable difference or not will depend on the
> number of files they access, either with automated build procedures or
> GUI file managers that like to peek inside every file.  People who
> keep their directory trees sparse and don't venture out of their home
> directory in a GUI much will probably not know the difference except
> that tmpwatch may not clean up correctly and their mailer may have to
> do more work to decide if a message is unread (etc.).
In my experience, viewing a folder of images as thumbnails is
significantly slower with atime. Many users will be viewing folders of
images methinks. In addition, most GUIs read a large (read huge) number
of files when they load, so load times for the  GUI should be reduced also.
>
> -- 
>   Les Mikesell
>    lesmikesell at gmail.com
>
>
>
EDIT: Sorry if anyone gets this twice, forgot to forward it to the list..
-- 

Benjamin Lewis
Fedora Ambassador
ben.lewis at benl.co.uk

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