[Gllug] what is causing disk activity ?

[Andrew Farnsworth]

On Thu Nov 20 11:47 , 'Daniel P. Berrange' <dan at berrange.com> sent:

>On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 04:38:57PM +0000, Alain Williams wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 04:29:51PM +0000, Martin A. Brooks wrote:
>> > Alain Williams wrote:
>> > >> You're using a journalling filesystem?
>> > >>      
>> > >
>> > > Yes: ext3
>> > 
>> > There you go then.
>> 
>> But I'm not updating anything on disk .... so why the writes ?
>
>Every read operation updates the access time on the file, which results in
>a write for the file metadata....and also the journal...  Might like to 
>try the noatime mount option 
>
>http://tldp.org/LDP/solrhe/Securing-Optimizing-Linux-RH-Edition-v1.3/chap6sec73.html
>
>Daniel

Out of curiosity, does reading the last access time of a file update the access
time of that file?  and if so, does it update before or after the atime is read?

Andy
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