[tahoe-dev] [tahoe-lafs] #897: "tahoe backup" thinks "ctime" means "creation time"

[tahoe-lafs]

#897: "tahoe backup" thinks "ctime" means "creation time"
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 Reporter:  zooko                                    |           Owner:  warner   
     Type:  defect                                   |          Status:  new      
 Priority:  major                                    |       Milestone:  undecided
Component:  unknown                                  |         Version:  1.5.0    
 Keywords:  forward-compatibility docs tahoe-backup  |   Launchpad_bug:           
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Comment(by davidsarah):

 Replying to [comment:4 warner]:
 > The synthetic "st_platform" key will contain {{{sys.platform}}}, so
 something
 > like "linux2" or "darwin" or "windows". The hope is that this is a cheap
 way
 > to provide some useful information to future developers and cyber-
 historians
 > to interpret the rest of the st_* fields in some meaningful way.

 I know Tahoe doesn't attempt to provide anonymity of file uploaders, but
 from a privacy point of view, why should the holder of the directory read
 cap have this information?

 > (note for future discussion: some POSIX-ish filesystems do provide
 > creation-time, in the form of OS-X's st_birthtime, and supposedly
 something
 > that ZFS offers. If we can determine that the semantics of these are the
 > same, it could be argued that windows-creation-time should be renamed
 > {{{creation-time}}}, and only populated on platforms that offer it,
 which
 > would be st_birthtime from HFS+/OS-X, st_ctime on windows, and something
 else
 > on ZFS)
 >
 > (and note that, if we *cannot* determine that the semantics are the
 same,
 > then we should probably refrain from trying to coerce them into the same
 > field, lest we make the same mistake that Python's os.stat did, making
 life
 > more difficult for somebody in the future who is trying to figure out
 whether
 > a given file's so-called "creation-time" was really the ZFS notion, or
 the
 > HFS+ notion, or whatever).

 I think they are the same. Also I think {{{posix-change-time}}} should be
 {{{metadata-change-time}}}, since a system that provides it isn't
 necessarily a POSIX system.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/ticket/897#comment:5>
tahoe-lafs <http://allmydata.org>
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