> Jim Jackson wrote:

>> Spoon wrote:

>>> I'm working with a system where the "typical" hard disk drive has
>>> been replaced with a small flash-based drive.
>>> To avoid premature aging of the flash drive, files that are updated
>>> often are written to a RAM-based filesystem.
>>> ...
>>> (Files written to /var and /tmp are stored in RAM.)
>>> Suppose I read or write /var/log/messages, where is the metadata
>>> about that file (such as last accessed, last modified, etc) stored?
>>> Is it possible that some metadata is written to /dev/hda?
>>> (I've been wondering whether I should set noatime for /var)

>> I would recommend setting noatime on any rw mounted flash-drive
>> partition.
>> I even use noatime on hardrive partitions - speeds things up quite a bit.
>> There is a thread at the moment in the linux-kernel-mail-list on ditching
>> atime, and introducing a sort-of-atime but with reduced overhead.

>
> Indeed. The major players seem to agree (??) on ditching atime. ...