Updating of access times

[Bell, Robert (IM&T, Clayton)]

rsync Folks,

Firstly, thanks heaps to the maintainers of rsync - such a valuable utility.

We have a scenario where we need to take a copy of a filesystem, and use rsync to do so, 
but would like to retain the original access times on the source files.
I did not find an option to do this, and would be grateful for advice if this is possible.

If not, we have a case where an enhancement (--restore-access-times ?) would be valuable, to us at least.

--restore-access-times	rsync restores the pre-existing access time after accessing a file

(System dump utilities like xfsdump do restore (or not update) access times.)

Thanks
Rob.

Dr Robert C. Bell
Retirement Fellow
CSIRO Australia
Information Management and Technology
Scientific Computing