How to get file creation date time in Bash Debian

Question

I m using Bash on Debian GNU Linux 6 0  Is it possible to get the file creation date time  Not the modification date time  ls -lh a txt and stat -c  y a txt both only give the modification time

User · Accepted Answer

Unfortunately your quest won t be possible in general  as there are only 3 distinct time values stored for each of your files as defined by the POSIX standard  see Base Definitions section 4 8 File Times Update      Each file has three distinct associated timestamps  the time of last   data access  the time of last data modification  and the time the file   status last changed  These values are returned in the file   characteristics structure struct stat  as described in  lt sys stat h gt     EDIT  As mentioned in the comments below  depending on the filesystem used metadata may contain file creation date  Note however storage of information like that is non standard  Depending on it may lead to portability problems moving to another filesystem  in case the one actually used somehow stores it anyways

User · Answer

Note that if you ve got your filesystem mounted with noatime for performance reasons  then the atime will likely show the creation time  Given that noatime results in a massive performance boost  by removing a disk write for every time a file is read   it may be a sensible configuration option that also gives you the results you want

User · Answer

If you really want to achieve that you can use a file watcher like inotifywait   You watch a directory and you save information about file creations in separate file outside that directory   while true  do   change   inotifywait -e close write moved to create      change   change          if     change            then   scriptToStoreInfoAboutFile  fi done   As no creation time is stored  you can build your own system based on inotify

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Another trick to add to your arsenal is the following     grep -r  Copyright    lt path-to-source-files gt  src   Generally speaking  if one changes a file they should claim credit in the    Copyright     Examine the results for dates  file names  contributors and contact email   example grep result     lt path gt  src someobject h    Copyright 2007-2012  lt creator s name gt   lt creator s email gt  at  lt some URL gt  gt

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You can find creation time - aka birth time - using stat and also match using find  We have these files showing last modified time      ls -l --time-style long-iso   sort -k6 total 692 -rwxrwx---  1 XXXX XXXX 249159 2013-05-31 14 47 Getting Started pdf -rwxrwx---  1 XXXX XXXX 275799 2013-12-30 21 12 TheScienceofGettingRich pdf -rwxrwx---  1 XXXX XXXX  25600 2015-05-07 18 52 Thumbs db -rwxrwx---  1 XXXX XXXX 148051 2015-05-07 18 55 AsAManThinketh pdf   To find files created within a certain time frame using find as below   Clearly  the filesystem knows about the birth time of a file      find -newerBt  2014-06-13    -newerBt  2014-06-13 12 16 10  -ls  20547673299906851  148 -rwxrwx---   1 XXXX XXXX   148051 May  7 18 55   AsAManThinketh pdf 1407374883582246  244 -rwxrwx---   1 XXXX XXXX   249159 May 31  2013   Getting  Started pdf   We can confirm this using stat      stat -c   w  n      sort 2014-06-13 12 16 03 873778400  0100 AsAManThinketh pdf 2014-06-13 12 16 04 006872500  0100 Getting Started pdf 2014-06-13 12 16 29 607075500  0100 TheScienceofGettingRich pdf 2015-05-07 18 32 26 938446200  0100 Thumbs db   stat man pages explains  w    w     time of file birth  human-readable  - if unknown

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Cited from https   unix stackexchange com questions 50177 birth-is-empty-on-ext4 131347 131347   the following shellscript would work to get creation time   get crtime        for target in         do        inode   stat -c  i    target           fs   df    target      tail -1   awk   print  1           crtime   sudo debugfs -R  stat  lt     inode    gt      fs   2 gt  dev null   grep -oP  crtime  -- s  K            printf   s t s n     target      crtime      done

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As  mikyra explained  creation date time is not stored anywhere   All the methods above are nice  but if you want to quickly get only last modify date  you can type   ls -lit  path   with -t option you list all file in  path odered by last modify date

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mikyra s answer is good The fact just like what he said    jason rh5 test   stat test txt   File   test txt    Size  0               Blocks  8          IO Block  4096   regular empty file Device  802h 2050d      Inode  588720      Links  1 Access   0664 -rw-rw-r--   Uid     500    jason    Gid     500    jason  Access  2013-03-14 01 58 12 000000000 -0700 Modify  2013-03-14 01 58 12 000000000 -0700 Change  2013-03-14 01 58 12 000000000 -0700   if you want to verify wich file was created first you can structure your file name by appending system date when you create a series of files

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Creation date time is normally not stored  So no  you can t

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ls -i menus xml  94490 menus xml Here the number 94490 represents inode  Then do a   df -h  Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use  Mounted on  dev mapper vg-root   4 0G  3 4G  408M  90    tmpfs                 1 9G     0  1 9G   0   dev shm  dev sda1             124M   27M   92M  23   boot  dev mapper vg-var    7 9G  1 1G  6 5G  15   var   To find the mounting point of the root     filesystem  because the file menus xml is on     that is   dev mapper vg-root   debugfs -R  stat  lt 94490    dev mapper vg-root  The output may be like the one below   debugfs -R  stat  lt 94490    dev mapper vg-root  debugfs 1 41 12  17-May-2010  Inode  94490   Type  regular    Mode   0644   Flags  0x0 Generation  2826123170    Version  0x00000000 User      0   Group      0   Size  4441 File ACL  0    Directory ACL  0 Links  1   Blockcount  16 Fragment   Address  0    Number  0    Size  0 ctime  0x5266e438 -- Wed Oct 23 09 46 48 2013 atime  0x5266e47b -- Wed Oct 23 09 47 55 2013 mtime  0x5266e438 -- Wed Oct 23 09 46 48 2013 Size of extra inode fields  4 Extended attributes stored in inode body     selinux    unconfined u object r usr t s0 000   31  BLOCKS   0-1  375818-375819 TOTAL  2   Where you can see the creation time   ctime  0x5266e438 -- Wed Oct 23 09 46 48 2013

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ls -i file  output is for me 68551981 debugfs -R  stat  lt 68551981 gt    dev sda3    dev sda3 is the disk on which the file exists   results - crtime value  root loft9156     debugfs -R  stat  lt 68551981 gt    dev sda3 debugfs 1 41 12  17-May-2010  Inode  68551981   Type  regular    Mode   0644   Flags  0x80000 Generation  769802755    Version  0x00000000 00000001 User      0   Group      0   Size  38973440 File ACL  0    Directory ACL  0 Links  1   Blockcount  76128 Fragment   Address  0    Number  0    Size  0  ctime  0x526931d7 1697cce0 -- Thu Oct 24 16 42 31 2013  atime  0x52691f4d 7694eda4 -- Thu Oct 24 15 23 25 2013  mtime  0x526931d7 1697cce0 -- Thu Oct 24 16 42 31 2013   crtime  0x52691f4d 7694eda4 -- Thu Oct 24 15 23 25 2013   Size of extra inode fields  28 EXTENTS   0-511   352633728-352634239   512-1023   352634368-352634879   1024-2047   288392192-288393215   2048-4095   355803136-355805183   4096-6143   357941248-357943295   6144 -9514   357961728-357965098

User · Answer

even better   lsct            debugfs -R  stat  lt   ls -i   1     read a b echo -n  a    gt    df   1     read a  read a b  echo   a    2 gt   dev null   grep --color auto crtime     read a b c d      echo  d       lsct  etc  Wed Jul 20 19 25 48 2016

[linux] How to get file creation date/time in Bash/Debian?

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