[Popcon-developers] Bug#298760: How about using a "sentinel" file?

[Karl E. Jorgensen]

For systems with filesystems mount *with* the atime option (or merely
without the noatime option...) AND running regular backups, the backups
will (usually?) end up updating atime. At least this is what I can
gather from the bug history...

To detect this, why not place a "sentinel" file in the
popularity-contest package, which would not normally get read? 

The popularity-contest package could then read & store the atime of this
file on each run - if the atime has changed since the last run, it is
reasonable to assume that some other package is trawling through the
file system (backups, integrity checker, nosy user, whatever) and thus
disregard all atimes since they are not reliable?

-- 
Karl E. Jorgensen
karl at jorgensen.org.uk  http://www.jorgensen.org.uk/
karl at jorgensen.com     http://karl.jorgensen.com
==== Today's fortune:
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
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