On Tue, 24 Oct 2023 at 09:07, Jeff Layton <jlayton@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > The new flag idea is a good one. The catch though is that there are no > readers of i_version in-kernel other than NFSD and IMA, so there would > be no in-kernel users of I_VERSION_QUERIED_STRICT. I actually see that as an absolute positive. I think we should *conceptually* do those two flags, but then realize that there are no users of the STRICT version, and just skip it. So practically speaking, we'd end up with just a weaker version of I_VERSION_QUERIED that is that "I don't care about atime" case. I really can't find any use that would *want* to see i_version updates for any atime updates. Ever. We may have had historical user interfaces for i_version, but I can't find any currently. But to be very very clear: I've only done some random grepping, and I may have missed something. I'm not dismissing Dave's worries, and he may well be entirely correct. Somebody would need to do a much more careful check than my "I can't find anything". Linus