lib/38942: No support for birthtime in utimes(2)

[pfgshield-freebsd%yahoo.com@localhost]

>Number:         38942
>Category:       lib
>Synopsis:       No support for birthtime in utimes(2)
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    lib-bug-people
>State:          open
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Thu Jun 12 00:05:13 +0000 2008
>Originator:     Pedro F. Giffuni
>Release:        current (manpage)
>Organization:
>Environment:
>Description:
According to "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD OS", in section 8.2 
- New Filesystem Capabilities, UFS2 added a new timestamp in stat(2) for 
birthtime, the time when the  file was originally created.

NetBSD's sys/stat.h has it, however in order to set it utimes(2) has to support 
it.
According to FreeBSD's utimes(2) manpage:

"For file systems that support file birth (creation) times (such as UFS2), the 
birth time will be set to the value of the second element if the second element 
is older than the currently set birth time.  To set both a birth time and a 
modification time, two calls are required; the first to set the birth time and 
the second to set the (presumably newer) modification time.  ..."

NetBSD's utimes(2) manpage doesn't mention such feature. 



>How-To-Repeat:
I am attempting to add birthtime support for BSDtar. In NetBSD it will detect 
birthtime in the stat structure but it will not update it properly.
>Fix:
Hopeful wishing ... Maybe it's just the manpage that needs an update?