why does sftp change mtime file attribute?
 

Why does the file modification timestamp get changed when I "get" a file via sftp?

I recently installed SuSE 9.1 machines in my home office and see the same behavior on both.. Have not seen this on Solaris or AIX...

simple answer
G_N_U
"Gnu is Not Unix"
Gnu philosophy which is revolutionaly in so many ways runs on several basic assumptions about proper coding.
One of those is "no special cases".
when you copy a file locally the new file gets a new (current) time stamp (it never even existed before !)
the same should happen when you copy a file from a remote location no matter how it's done.

?? I'm not concerned about local file copies. I'm talking about transferring files between systems via sftp.

When the target system is Solaris or AIX, mtime is not modified. When the target is either of my SuSE 9.1 systems, mtime is modified.

If foo_bar_foo's premise is absolutely true, then I should get the same behavior regardless of the *nix flavor I am using, but that is not what I am seeing.

Is there a way to configure behavior of mtime when using sftp? I sure don't see anything obvious in the config files...

Hmm ... upon further experimentation on several different OS's I retract my original contention that mtime was mis-behaving in Linux.

My apologies...