Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Suggestion: xtime as new inode attribute | From | Junio C Hamano <> | Date | Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:19:53 -0800 |
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Daniel Poelzleithner <poelzi@poelzi.org> writes:
> I would like to suggest a new attribute for inodes in linux filesystems > to record the last execution time of files. > > The problem: > > If a linux installation gets older and older, more and more programs get > installed over time. Mostly to just test them for a particular problem > and often the deinstallation is forgotten. To find out which packages > are not used for a long time is currently quite impossible. The user may > use program X which will run but not depend on program Y as a subprocess > for example. > > The solution: > > I suggest a new inode attribute called xtime, which is like atime, but > will only be updated when a file is executed. This would allow tracking > of unused binaries and could be used with some clever algorithms in the > cleanup program to find unused packages for removal or other cleanup > purposes.
As I've never seen "cat /bin/sh" or similar done on an executable binary by sane people, and I imagine that most sane back-up programs wouldn't touch atime, I suspect that what you want to do can be done by checking atime instead.
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