On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 10:59:08AM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> That's precisely the question I was answering; my opinion is that mtime 
> should indeed be updated.
> 
> I think of mtime as a cheap way to avoid something like storing SHA1 
> hashes of every file on the system.  It should thus change any time a 
> new hash value would result; partial writes would certainly qualify.  
> (My definition raises the interesting question of whether or not 
> rewriting the same data should cause mtime to be updated.  
> Architecturally, I can leave with either answer; pragmatically, note my 
> use of the word "cheap" -- checking for that situation is too 
> expensive.)

Well, I was asking this from a backup POW (do we want to backup only
partially-written data ?) But your comment make sense, and it's probably
the right thing to do.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--