Re: Bug#497514: coreutils: chmod, chown, and chgrp change ctime even when no change was necessary

[Erik Rossen]

On Tue, Sep 02, 2008 at 02:30:20PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Erik Rossen wrote:
> > As far as speed is concerned, you are right that an extra stat() would
> > usually not improve matters.  (Would it be an enormous penalty?  I doubt
> > it.)  But users of file integrity checking systems like myself will be
> > grateful for the change of behavior.
> 
> You would be surprised how much performance can change when adding
> extra stat calls.  Many filesystems such as networked filesystems are
> extremely latency bound and those kinds of changes have a strong
> negative impact upon them.

OK.  But I still wonder how expensive are the extra stat() calls that
would be spent compared to the extra chown() calls that could be saved
by checking first to see if a chown() was even necessary?

-- 
Erik Rossen                               OpenPGP key: 2935D0B9
address@hidden                          If you do not know what
http://people.linux-gull.ch/rossen        to do, start with RTFM.