web-serving does not update a file's atime?

[Mikhail Teterin]

On Tuesday 17 August 2004 07:29 pm, you wrote:
= Mikhail Teterin <mi+mxmoz at aldan.algebra.com> wrote:
= > Nathan Kinkade wrote:
= > 
= > >On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 08:35:45AM -0400, Mikhail Teterin wrote:
= > >  
= > >>Hello!
= > >>
= > >>I tried to use stat(1) to see the last time a file was downloaded
= > >>through Apache.
= > >>
= > >>To my surprise, all three dates displayed by stat are long ago,
= > >>even though the web-server's log is showing downloads from a just
= > >>a few hours back.
= > >>
= > >>The file-system used to be mounted noatime, but I turned that
= > >>option off some time ago. If I read one of those files (with
= > >>head(1) or file(1), for example), the atime is updated. But if
= > >>Apache serves it out -- it is not... There is no caching in Apache
= > >>either.
= > >
= > >Is this all running on your local machine? If not, is it possible
= > >that there is a proxy server between you and the host running
= > >Apache? Perhaps a transparent proxy?
= > >
= > >
= > There are not other servers and no proxies. The locally running
= > apache logs successful requests for the files, but their atimes are
= > not updated.
= > 
= > Just checked -- the file was last downloaded 13 minutes ago, but all
= > of the three time-stamps (according to stat(1)) point to many hours
= > back...
= 
= My guess on this would be that Apache is caching the file and has only
= actually loaded it from disk once.
= 
= Try stop/starting Apache and see if it has to reload the file to see
= if my guess is correct.

Apache is restarted regularly here by newsyslog...

	-mi