Alan Cox wrote:However, relatime has the POSIX behavior without the overhead. Therefore that (and maybe reldiratime?) are a far better choice. I don't see a big problem with some version of utils not supporting it, since it can be in the kernel and will be in the utils soon enough. We have lived without it this long, sounds as if we could live a bit longer.In some setups it will and in others it won't. Nor is it the only
application that has this requirement. Ext3 currently is a standards
compliant file system. Turn off atime and its very non standards
compliant, turn to relatime and its not standards compliant but nobody
will break (which is good)
Linux has always been a "POSIX unless its stupid" type of system. For the upstream kernel, we should do the right thing -- noatime by default -- but allow distros and people that care about rigid compliance to easily change the default.