I am renaming a directory and its modification time remains the same.
Is this normal? If so, is there any way to have it change when it is
renamed/moved?

--
Peter

Peter,

This is documented in man mv.

A little excerpt:

When both source and destination are on the same filesystem,
they are
the same file (just the name is changed; owner, mode, timestamps
remain
unchanged). When they are on different filesystems, the source
file is
copied and then deleted. mv will copy modification time,
access time,
user and group ID, and mode if possible. When copying user
and/or group
ID fails, the setuid and setgid bits are cleared in the copy.


You could always use touch.

mv olddir newdir; touch newdir

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Peter wrote:
> I am renaming a directory and its modification time remains the same.
> Is this normal?

Yes. You aren't changing the contents of the directory, so it's mtime doesn't
change.

You /are/ changing the metadata about the directory, so it's ctime will change,
as will the mtime of the parent directory (the file in which the target
directory node is recorded).

> If so, is there any way to have it change when it is renamed/moved?

Probably. But, you need to alter the contents of the directory in order to alter
it's mtime. A rename doesn't alter the contents any. P'haps touch will do.
Experiment a bit.


- --
Lew Pitcher
IT Specialist, Enterprise Data Systems,
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed are my own, not my employers')
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Thanks for your reply but I tested with ctime and it also does not
change after a directory move/rename:

root@marty:/vol3# ls -lhc --full-time
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 2006-02-16 15:24:17.000000000 -0500
test/

root@marty:/vol3# mv test test2

root@marty:/vol3# ls -lhc --full-time
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 2006-02-16 15:24:17.000000000 -0500
test2/

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Peter wrote:
> Thanks for your reply but I tested with ctime and it also does not
> change after a directory move/rename:

You are correct. I realized afterword that I was wrong about the ctime. ctime
would only change if you changed the directory metadata (extended or truncated
the directory, changed it's permission bits, owner, etc.). Since this is a
rename, only the parent directory changes, so it's mtime would change. But since
a rename doesn't change the target's metadata, the target directory ctime
wouldn't change.

Sorry for the initial misinformation.

[snip]
- --
Lew Pitcher
IT Specialist, Enterprise Data Systems,
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed are my own, not my employers')
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