Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 23:46:39 -0700 From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: write access to various times Message-ID: <60946.1320475599@tristatelogic.com>
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Greetings, It would appear that in 8.2-RELEASE, at least, each "struct stat" contains four fields, each of type "timespec", and having the following names: st_atimespec st_mtimespec st_ctimespec st_birthtimespec I already know that if I want to modify either (or both) of the first two fields listed above, I should call utimes(2). But what do I do if I need to modify the values of either or both of the other two fields? (I may want to do this, e.g. if I am trying to restore all of the struct stat fields from a backed-up representation of some original filesystem entry.) The current man page for utimes(2) says (among other things): =========================================================================== ... If times is non-NULL, it is assumed to point to an array of two timeval structures. The access time is set to the value of the first element, and the modification time is set to the value of the second element. 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. Ideally a new system call will be added that allows the setting of all three times at once... =========================================================================== Is there any ETA for this postulated new system call? It would be most helpful to have that. Also, of course, although the method described above for setting the value of the st_birthtimespec field is rather clumsey and inefficient, at least there _is_ a way to set that field. I am concerned however because I personally still know of no way whatsoever to set the value of the st_ctimespec field. Is there any way to do that? It would be most helpful to have that too. Regards, rfg
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