IBM Support

The file change time or Ctime is not kept during restore or retrieve

Troubleshooting


Problem

The Tivoli Storage Manager client restore or retrieve does not keep the file original change time or Ctime. . The file "change time" will be changed to the time the file is restored.

Symptom

Given the following example on Linux:

]# ls -ial testfile
244805 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 469 May 7 15:45 testfile

# stat testfile
File: `testfile'
Size: 469 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 Regular File
Device: 803h/2051d Inode: 244805 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2008-05-07 15:48:48.000000000 -0400
Modify: 2008-05-07 15:45:32.000000000 -0400
Change: 2008-05-08 11:15:59.000000000 -0400

The testfile has :

inode: 244805
atime: 2008-05-07 15:48:48
mtime: 2008-05-07 15:45:32
ctime: 2008-05-08 11:15:59

Perform a restore. For example :

#dsmc restore testfile -replace=yes

After the file is restored, verify the creation time. For example :

#ls -ial testfile
244805 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 469 May 7 15:45 testfile

[root@tsm02 jin]# stat testfile
File: `testfile'
Size: 469 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 Regular File
Device: 803h/2051d Inode: 244805 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2008-05-07 15:48:48.000000000 -0400
Modify: 2008-05-07 15:45:32.000000000 -0400
Change: 2008-05-08 11:23:22.000000000 -0400

After the restore, testfile's ctime is changed to the restore time, i.e,
ctime : 2008-05-08 11:23:22

Cause

This is a limitation with UNIX and Linux Operating systems

Environment

UNIX and Linux Operating Systems

Resolving The Problem

The Tivoli Storage Manager client uses the utime() operating system call to set the file atime, mtime, ctime at the time of restore. The result we see during the Tivoli Storage Manager client restore and retrieve is due to the fact that the system call utime() changes the ctime. The ctime is controlled by the Operating System and can not be set by the application. This limitation does not apply to GPFS file systems.

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Document Information

Modified date:
17 June 2018

UID

swg21305283