[mischief6]

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.

[mike_hock]

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.

[cromka]

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

[mischief6]

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