The POSIX.1 draft spec for utimensat() says that if a times[n].tv_nsec field is UTIME_OMIT or UTIME_NOW, then the value in the corresponding tv_sec field is ignored. See the last sentence of this para, from the spec: If the tv_nsec field of a timespec structure has the special value UTIME_NOW, the file's relevant timestamp shall be set to the greatest value supported by the file system that is not greater than the current time. If the tv_nsec field has the special value UTIME_OMIT, the file's relevant timestamp shall not be changed. In either case, the tv_sec field shall be ignored. However the current Linux implementation requires the tv_sec value to be zero (or the EINVAL error results). This requirement should be removed. CC: Miklos Szeredi <miklos@xxxxxxxxxx> CC: Al Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> CC: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> --- linux-2.6.26-rc4/fs/utimes.c 2008-06-04 13:23:38.000000000 +0200 +++ linux-2.6.26-rc4-utimensat-fix-v4/fs/utimes.c 2008-06-04 13:22:44.000000000 +0200 @@ -169,14 +169,6 @@ if (utimes) { if (copy_from_user(&tstimes, utimes, sizeof(tstimes))) return -EFAULT; - if ((tstimes[0].tv_nsec == UTIME_OMIT || - tstimes[0].tv_nsec == UTIME_NOW) && - tstimes[0].tv_sec != 0) - return -EINVAL; - if ((tstimes[1].tv_nsec == UTIME_OMIT || - tstimes[1].tv_nsec == UTIME_NOW) && - tstimes[1].tv_sec != 0) - return -EINVAL; /* Nothing to do, we must not even check the path. */ if (tstimes[0].tv_nsec == UTIME_OMIT && -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html