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while it is unfortunate it requires a write, it is useful in some cases. for example, finding old objects in a cache, or today i used it to find out what firmware my kernel is loading by checking atime of /lib/firmware.

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So it's useful as a debugging feature that you might want to briefly turn on once every decade.

Finding old objects in a cache is an issue specific to caches and should be implemented there.

For the latter you could enable it, reboot and get the same information right away, then disable it?

i did not see a clear list of all firmware files read by the kernel in dmesg, so the find/atime trick worked well.

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