[comp.protocols.appletalk] Aufs and file timestamps

morgan@JESSICA.STANFORD.EDU (08/04/88)

One thing that bothers me about Aufs (which I otherwise greatly
admire) is the way it deals with file creation/modification times.  As
far as I can see with Mac files stored in Aufs the GetInfo-visible
"Created:" time is updated every time the file is modified, rendering
it useless.  Worse, when a file is moved to an Aufs volume, its
creation/modification times are not preserved, unlike other
Mac-compatible volumes.  Also, I just noticed that all my files on a
particular Aufs server had their "Modified:" times updated by some
system process that happened last Wednesday.  

As I'm obliged to work on different systems in different places and
move files around between them and keep track of which version is
which, losing the time information is a real obstacle.  It also makes
me reluctant to recommend Aufs use to unsophisticated Mac users.

While my grasp of the mysterious "three times" that Unix keeps is
limited, it seems to me that using the Unix filesystem timestamps is
inadequate for Mac files.  Has this bothered anyone else enough to
attempt a fix?

- RL "Bob" Morgan
  Networking Systems
  Stanford