question for file attributes (atime, ctime)

[Yasushi Okubo]

Hi,

I looked though documentation and also checked last 9 months of 
archives, but could not find the corresponding information.   We are 
having an issue with incremental backup with arkeia.   Arkeia checks if 
ctime/mtime of the file are changed, if so, it backs up.

I realized that when I ran rsync from a cammnd line, it changed ctime, 
and preserved atime of the file in a destination as follows even though 
a file has no change in its content.  Is this a expected  action for rsync ?

OS:  Redhat linux WS 3.0
kernel: 2.4.21-20.ELsmp
nfs: nfs-utils-1.0.6-31EL
rsync: rsync-2.5.7-5.3E

Thanks,
yasushi

== ctime ===
ls -ltrc /mirror2/backup_test/current/test_dir/test_dir2/
total 4
-rw-r--r--    2 root     root           22 Oct 25 13:45 testfiles3.txt

== atime ===
ls -ltra /mirror2/backup_test/current/test_dir/test_dir2/
total 12
-rw-r--r--    2 root     root           22 Apr 28 10:13 testfiles3.txt
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Apr 28 10:13 .
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root         4096 Oct 21 14:22 ..

== mtime ===
ls -ltr /mirror2/backup_test/current/test_dir/test_dir2/
total 4
-rw-r--r--    2 root     root           22 Apr 28 10:13 testfiles3.txt