Uses for access time

[XMRP50000[jcm]-a.v.reed]

In article <4876 at cup.portal.com>, DGD at cup.portal.com writes:
> The most useful aspect of "access time" is for a system administrator.
> I was once so unfortunate as to be on a large system where the users
> woould squirrel away copies of large programs (.c's .o's .a's ,etc.)
> and very rarely use them.  When the disk crunch hit, as it had to, a simple
> "find" of files not accessed for 6 months showed about 200 megabytes
> of files which were candidates for purging/backup-to-tape/whatever.
>     "If you haven't used it for 6 months, you don't need it on-line!"

Unfortunately, "access time" is NOT updated when an executable is
executed. I was once on a system whose very clever administrator wrote a
demon to archive any file not "accessed" in the last month. He soon
archived an executable I was exec'ing every day from my .profile.
The only way to restore an archived file was from one's own shell - and
since my .profile was bombing, I could not get one. I finally managed to
move the .profile after su'ing from a friend's login. I then retrieved
the missing executables, and put in code to touch all my executables
periodically. Ugh.
				Adam Reed (mtgzz!avr)