Without digging into the rationale behind access time tracking, its write-amplification effects in particular for SSDs, or the fact that it can be somewhat mitigated by the
relatime
and lazytime
mount options:
Can we produce a list of the (allegedly very few) applications that actually **require** atime support, and **how** (severely) they break if it's not used?
Naturally, a number of applications that **inspect** atime indirectly rely on it, in the sense that they report a wrong atime if it is not tracked (e.g., listing or forensic tools). This question should only concern applications that actually **exploit** this piece of information, rather than presenting it, and which **break** at least to some extent functionality-wise if they are used on data without atime support (e.g., the prime example of mails not shown as read).
Asked by akobel
(141 rep)
Apr 16, 2019, 10:53 AM