How to maintain ctime, mtime and atime of file when copying file on NFS v3 drive

Question

I am customizing NFS v3 server. When I copy files from other location to NFS Drive on Linux, the copied file times are set to current time. I think, when copy is done, at least, create, modify are same as source file, but it does not work. I am using NFS v3 protocol.

For example: cp ./i686-linux-gnu-ar /mnt/nfs

/mnt/nfs : mount point

As you can see above screenshot, source file and copied file's time attribute are different.

In NFS server, I know SETATTR is used to set file attribute including time properties, but when I debug it, I couldn't get timestamp "Feb 20 2021" from SETATTR argument. Actually, The copied file time can be updated only if can get the timestamp ("Feb 20 2021"), I think.

Does anyone know about this? Thanks!

Answer 1

Have you tried the --archive aka -a option to the cp command?

-a, --archive
same as -dR --preserve=all

--preserve[=ATTR_LIST]
preserve the specified attributes (default: mode,ownership,timestamps), if possible additional attributes: context, links, xattr, all