[Duplicity-talk] Preventing access time modification?

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

I guess this is something for the wishlist, but it shouldn't be too
hard to implement:

I'm using duplicity to backup a classical unix mailserver where
mailboxes are not only read using IMAP or POP but also logged in users
locally on the filesystem.

And there's one big annoyance: Many classical unix text-mode MUAs
recognize mailboxes with new, unread mail by comparing modification
time with (read) access time. If the last one is older, there must be
new unread mail in mailbox. But if duplicity runs in the nightly
backup run, it changes the access time and therefore, the MUAs think,
there's no new mail in that mailbox.

This is especially annoying if you automatically sort your incoming
mails into a lots of folder and then read the mails in those folders
with new mail, because you will miss all folders where new mail came
in before but not after the backup job. Short said: duplicity marks
mail folders it backupped as read.

Since this feature will have a (probably only slight, but still
recognizable) performance loss when reading and comparing files and
there are probably uses where this such a feature is not wanted, it
should be only optional, i.e. activated by a switch like e.g.
"--no-access-time-modification".

(Unfortunately I'm much more the Perl guy than the Python guy, so I
can't offer a patch.)

                Regards, Axel
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