Changing the default for ZFS atime to off?

[Steven Hartland]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Vande More" <amvandemore at gmail.com>
To: "Jeremy Chadwick" <jdc at koitsu.org>
Cc: "Steven Hartland" <smh at freebsd.org>; <fs at freebsd.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 09, 2013 3:59 AM
Subject: Re: Changing the default for ZFS atime to off?


> On Sat, Jun 8, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Jeremy Chadwick <jdc at koitsu.org> wrote:
> 
>> I **strongly** oppose this change, for one key reason: the classic
>> Berkeley UNIX mail spool format (known as "mbox"), which is still
>> predominantly used on most UNIX systems today.
>>
>> Mail clients which read mbox files require a combination of atime and
>> mtime to determine if new mail has arrived within the mailbox.  If
>> mtime > atime, then there's new mail.  Not all mail clients support
>> alternate methods of detection (for example mutt has check_mbox_size,
>> which has had bugs/problems in the past (Google check_mbox_size),
>> and is fallible in other ways).
>>
>> Further points:
>>
>> - FreeBSD comes with sendmail (MTA/MDA), which supports only mbox
>>   natively
>> - FreeBSD comes with mail/Mail/mailx (client), which only supports
>>   only mbox natively
>> - FreeBSD comes with biff/comsat, as well as from(1), which supports
>>   only mbox natively
>>
> 
> Most modern linuce use relatime eg the benefits of noatime and preserving
> functionality for mail stuff.
> 
> https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Power_Management_Guide/Relatime.html

Now thats a clever idea, like it.

    Regards
    Steve

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