How to get file creation date/time in Bash/Debian?
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.
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 <sys/stat.h>.
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.
ls -i file #output is for me 68551981
debugfs -R 'stat <68551981>' /dev/sda3 # /dev/sda3 is the disk on which the file exists
#results - crtime value
[root@loft9156 ~]# debugfs -R 'stat <68551981>' /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
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.
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.
Creation date/time is normally not stored. So no, you can't.