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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

Another trick to add to your arsenal is the following:

$ grep -r "Copyright" /<path-to-source-files>/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:

/<path>/src/someobject.h: * Copyright 2007-2012 <creator's name> <creator's email>(at)<some URL>>

Answer 4

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 <'"${inode}"'>' "${fs}" 2>/dev/null | grep -oP 'crtime.*--\s*\K.*')
       printf "%s\t%s\n" "${target}" "${crtime}"
   done
}

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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.