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

[Bill Moran]

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.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com