Re: noatime mounts inhibiting atime updates via utime()

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Tue, 4 Dec 2018 15:56:18 -0500 (EST)
    From:        Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <201812042056.PAA17716%Stone.Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>

  | This is mainly to say that, if you change the behaviour, you might want
  | to update the manpage as well; I too think the "never do it
  | automatically, but do it when specifically told to" behaviour is
  | probably more useful than the documented (and actual) behaviour.

I'd probably change it more to be "do it when explicitly asked to,
or whenever the inode is being updated for other reasons and an
atime update could be made" - that is "unless instructed, don't do
inode updates that update nothing but the atime", or IOW, "atime
updates are not urgent and not required but are not prohibited".

That is, the purpose of noatime is to reduce I/O, not to hide the fact
that files are being accessed (same with nodevmtime).

kre