From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <442C0C65.1060607@proweb.co.uk> Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:50:45 +0100 From: matt User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: patch/list sorry/proc-mtime References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: 26ceb602-ead1-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > it duplicates information already in the status file, > and it would be the *only* kernel device file in the system > that didn't use kerndate as the mtime. when did the > plan 9 approach become "there's more than one way to do it"? hmm I wonder when the kernel was written to the file system ls -l /proc ahh, now I know > It's not useless, and it's the same as essentially every other > device file in the system. Then perhaps they convey the wrong information. Note the "essentially every other". Not "every other". That means you can't take a devices mtime to be kerndate, which means making *some* of them have kerndate presents duplicate data that is also untrustworthy and therefore meaningless and arbitrary. If we are assigning arbitrary pieces of data as the mtime then why not the start time of when the process was created and therefore the creation date of /proc/pid IMHO the creation time of /proc should be the boot time of the kernel. Kerndate should be somewhere but it is it really relevant to the current running state of the system ? > If it were different, I would find that confusing. > Just because you're confused doesn't mean everyone is. That is a weak argument against the idea. And would it really confuse you ? Surely you would remember this conversation. The question should surely be on the merit of the idea AND "will the break any existing code".