Klaus Knopper answers your Linux questions
Ask Klaus
Understanding and taming file timestamps.
Keeping Time
Hello, Klaus: A number of file manager apps such as Dolphin, PCManFM, and Thunar do not preserve a file's timestamp when copying it between filesystems. I'm trying to configure Debian 8.2.0 to do this and have found that if the filesystem I'm copying to is mounted on startup (i.e., specified in /etc/fstab), the timestamp is not preserved when copying; the current system time is substituted.
However, if I remove the line from fstab, reboot, have Dolphin mount it dynamically (putting it in /media/<myname>/<DiskUUID>), and then copy the file, the timestamp is preserved.
I assumed that it must be because of different timestamp-related mount options, such as atime, relatime, and so on, so I have tried several of these in the fstab line for that filesystem. The mount command shows that the option I tried is in effect, but the timestamp behavior does not change.
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