GNU bug report logs - #7184
Problems with timestamp on FAT32 directories

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From: Steven Lee <stlee987 <at> gmail.com>
To: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Cc: 7184 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#7184: Problems with timestamp on FAT32 directories
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 06:24:53 -0700

Hi Eric,

The change-time information is there as it shows up properly in Windows 
Explorer.  In addition, files are okay under Cygwin; the problem is only 
with directories.

FYI, I want to use rsync under Cygwin to backup files but it's causing 
all of my directories to be resetted to the epoch time.

-Steven


On 10/11/2010 5:05 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 10/10/2010 03:06 AM, Steven Lee wrote:
>> On an IOMega 500 GB Home Network Hard Drive with a FAT32 partition, all
>> of the directories are showing up as "1969-12-31 16:00" (or essentially
>> no date), but when viewing the directory in Windows Explorer,
>
>> Any idea what could be wrong?
>
> There's the issue.  FAT is an inherently metadata-poor file system, 
> which lacks a lot of information.  Then Windows mistakenly treats 
> stat()'s ctime as creation-time instead of change-time.  Cygwin MUST 
> fake timestamps for information that is not present in the native 
> filesystem, so it's easier to fake the epoch (0 seconds since Jan 1 
> 1970, adjusted for your timezone) than it is to fake any other date.  
> If you have further questions, you should raise them with the cygwin 
> list, as there is nothing that coreutils can do about the inherent 
> lack of information in your filesystem nor with cygwin's choice of how 
> to fake that information.
>

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