utimes(2): changing the birth time

[pluknet]

On 12 May 2010 22:38, Gary Jennejohn <gljennjohn at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 12 May 2010 17:53:38 +0000
> Knowledge Seeker <knoseeker at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> Is there a way to set birth time to a value greater(newer) than the actual
>> birth time (not in the future, but not the current time)?
>> The man page utimes(2) says that is only possible to change to an older
>> value.
>>
>> I saw a way to do this by opening a new file, coping the data, setting the
>> other attributes, then calling utimes 2 times to set the birth and the
>> modification time.
>>
>> Is there a way to change it without creating a new file?
>>
>
> Not with the current code.  vfs_syscalls.c:setutimes() explicitly checks
> that the new time is less than va_birthtime.
>
> Interestingly enough, there's code in the routine to handle what this
> comment in utimes(2) mentions, but it's not implemented yet.
>
> "Ideally a new system call will be added that allows the setting of all
> three times at once."
>

btw, there's a paper someone can find something interesting at.
http://www.usenix.org/events/bsdcon03/tech/full_papers/mckusick/mckusick_html/

-- 
wbr,
pluknet