I am having a problem with atime not being updated on a nfs-mount.
With a simple test like:
1 touch file1
2 stat file1
3 cp file1 file2
4 stat file1

The result will be different atimes in 2. and 4. when doing it on a local disk but not an nfs-mounted drive.
I am not using the noatime option.
I have read something about the attributes can be cached when using the default mount options, but to my understanding the maximum cache time should not exceed 60s (http://linux.die.net/man/5/nfs). The problem is that I am not seeing the atime beeing updated even after several days, maybe not never.
The nfs-client runs RHEL5 and the nfs-server runs Solaris10.
Can anybody understand what the problem is and what the remedy would be?

margu,

Just to be absolutely certain, nothing, at either end, on either machine, is configured to prevent atime update, is that correct?

Also, are both systems using the same version of NFS?

It seems like the client uses noatime after all.
So now I wonder if there is a way to enable atime without severe performance penalty?
I am thinking of options like caching the attributes and write them very seldom.
I need to have the atime updated when a file is copied for example but it is not any problem if it is done just once a day for example.
I read something about relatime, but I doubt it would solve my problem as the atime only gets updated if it is older than the mtime, or have I misunderstood it? Anyway, relatime is not available in my kernels.