Uses for access time

[William E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <3672 at lynx.UUCP> m5 at lynx.UUCP (Mike McNally (Man from Mars)) writes:
| I am trying to convince some of my ``colleagues'' here that keeping track
| of last-access times of files is a useful pursuit for an operating system.
| The only good reasons I can come up with are
| 
| 1.	it's nice for accounting/housekeeping

  DLA is as important as DLM for system management. It can be used to
identify files not frequently used and make them candidates for removal
to an archive (or bit bucket). I use it to determine if files on a BBS
are of interest to users, and to identify files on any system I use
which should be moved to other storage. If your colleagues don;t see
DLA, what use can they find for DLM. Both are for housekeeping of one
type or another.

| 2.	it's a useful security feature (has anyone looked at my database 
| 	since I left yesterday?)

  That's stretching. You could do it, but (a) would you bother, (b)
would the user remember the last time the db was used, and (c) does it
really provide mush security? If you need that level of security, build
a "file access" audit trail into the kernel.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me