Uses for access time, stuff in inodes

[It takes a clear mind to make it]

One problem with the access (and modify time) fields is that when you
are running in SV's O_SYNC mode, you end up doing two disk writes all
the time: once for the data, and once for the inode.  This can be
frightfully expensive.  It would be nice if there were some way for
O_SYNCed files to avoid this: maybe just defer the access/mod time
write until the file is closed.

In another issue, a number of us here have wanted another chunk of info
in the inode for a long time.  We call it the "ratfink" field, which
would contain the real user id of the last process that modified the
file.  This would make it a lot easier to track some things down...

-dB
{amdahl, cpsc6a, mtxinu, ptsfa, sun, hoptoad}!rtech!daveb daveb at rtech.uucp