Now let’s change the modify time. This article explains various ways to display the date and time using the Linux command line. mtime stands for modify time. If you modify the file, the data blocks change and thus ctime is changed. Bash (linux command line language) provides single command for converting and retrieving dates and times. Hi Friends I need to get the tine stamp of a file and based on this time stamp I am doing a comparison and based on this i need to call a java jar file. Linux - copy file and preserve timestamp, ownership, mode. If you want, you can change the timestamps on a file. The filesystems that support it are for example on Linux: ext4, Btrfs, ZFS, XFS, exFAT – Laradu9sna7al 20 hours ago @Aaron D. Marasco That's a shame, so it's an upstream issue. Changing file timestamps to a specific date and time. But all the results I got was either invalid or Linux File Timestamps Explained: atime, mtime, and ctime, How to Find Your Orders in the Amazon App, How to Automatically Move Gmail Messages to a Different Tab, How to Send Disappearing Messages in Telegram, How to Play or Pause Music by Tapping Your iPhone’s Back, © 2021 LifeSavvy Media. You modified the file and expected the mtime to be changed but it also changed the ctime. I already showed you above that it can also help in analyzing if someone accessed the files or modified it maliciously. How-To Geek is where you turn when you want experts to explain technology. Dave McKay first used computers when punched paper tape was in vogue, and he has been programming ever since. RELATED: How to Write an fstab File on Linux. Simply replace the file name with that of the directory. This script use stat command to find out information about file date and time using custom field format. As the name implies, the timestamps are used to find out when a file was accessed, modified and changed. A modified timestamp signifies the last time the contents of a file were modified. The syntax is as follows: find /dir/ -type f -newerXY 'yyyy-mm-dd' If the HISTTIMEFORMAT is set, the time stamp information associated with each history entry is written to the history file, marked with the history comment character. It’s because while mtime is under the control of user, ctime is controlled by the system. Here we use the cat command to add dates to a file … Our search string will be “sda”, the hard drive identifier. This is the syntax for the --file command: date --file=file_name.txt. Linux Files Timestamps # Before going into how to use the touch command, let’s start by reviewing the file timestamps in Linux. mtime is for Last data modification timestamp. Wanted to create the same on Mac Terminal.. Dave is a Linux evangelist and open source advocate. Say hello to -newerXY option for find command. I have a constantly running script that I output to a log file: script.sh >> /var/log/logfile I'd like to add a timestamp before each line that is appended to the log. For directories, the syntax remains the same. Linux date command is a very powerful utility to get or set system time in various ways. You can see the modification time and access time for … The -t option allows you to set the date and time stamp of the file. If you want to enable timestamp in history command for all local users too, then define the variable HISTTIMEFORMAT in /etc/profile file instead of root user’s ~/.bashrc file. Please note that UNIX / Linux filesystem never stores file creation date / time stamp. Linux timestamps hold a number rather than a date and time. In April 2019, when the modified timestamp was changed, EDT was in effect. The data was referenced but unchanged. So, how many seconds can be stored in a timestamp? 2. Lowell Heddings Lowell is the founder and CEO of How-To Geek. Every Linux file has three timestamps: the access timestamp (atime), the modified timestamp (mtime), and the changed timestamp (ctime). Below is the code that I am using. View the manual page for the date command using the command man date. X and Y represent any of the letters below: a – access time of the file reference; B – birth time of the file reference; c – inode status change time of reference; m – modification time of the file … You just need to provide the filename with it. Explained! How To Get Timestamp In Seconds. Maybe the future versions of stat command will show the creation timestamp in the Birth section. The ts directory contains the actual time-stamps for each user of sudo. The offsets and time zones aren’t stored anywhere. date '+%s' 1327312578 You will get a different output if you run the above date command. Timestamps play an important role in such situations. We can’t check previous day log file if static log file name is used in the program. He’s been running the show since creating the site back in 2006. Check your inbox and click the link to complete signin. Files in Linux have 3 types of timestamps: atime (access), mtime (modify) and ctime (change). It is a kind of security feature because it tells you the last time the file was changed. RELATED: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About inodes on Linux. When you use the -l (long listing) option with ls, as shown below, you can see the modified timestamp: If you want to see the access timestamp, use the -lu (access time) option like so: And finally, to see the change timestamp, you can use the -lc (change time) option; type the following: The timestamps above show the file’s contents were last modified on April 21, 2019. sort | head -n 1 - The sort command sorts the output and sends the output to head command to display the oldest file. Please note that UNIX / Linux filesystem never stores file creation date / time stamp. That’s why two of the timestamps have a five-hour offset, but the modified has a four-hour offset. Files in Linux have 3 types of timestamps: atime (access), mtime (modify) and ctime (change). Here are … The Difference Between grep, egrep, and fgrep Commands. Since we launched in 2006, our articles have been read more than 1 billion times. Atime or access timestamp is the last time a file was read, read by one of the processes directly or through commands and scripts. This timestamp tells you when was the last time the file was modified. Previous Previous post: Using the Linux Command Line to Find and Copy A Large Number of Files from a Large Archive, Preserving Metadata. 1 wget 2 curl 2.1 extra note 2.1.1 collisions 3 aria 3.1 download 3.2 man 3.3 other notes 3.3.1 redirects 3.3.2 collisions 3.3.3 o switch 4 Firefox 4.1 DownThemAll 5 Firefox old This is actually wget's default behavior. Linux Files Timestamps # Before going into how to use the touch command, let’s start by reviewing the file timestamps in Linux. When does “changed” not mean “modified”? Let’s dig deeper and check out what /proc/mounts can tell us. You can also not change ctime in the past by normal means. The -c option is used to return the date in a custom format, while the '%y' flag displays the last modification time. All Rights Reserved, When no access timestamp options are used in. It says ‘Birth’. As you can see, they have a very accurate, fractional seconds component. That’s the first partition on the first hard drive, and it happens to contain an ext4 file system. \n indicates new line. Let’s see these timestamps in detail. Hi guys, I have a directory in UNIX having files with the below format, i need to pickup the latest file having recent timestamp embedded on it, then need to rename it to a standard file name. If you want to copy files in Linux and also want to keep or preserve the original mode or timestamp or ownership (or all) , cp command gives an option (--preserve). To set the time stamp to a specific time: $ touch -t 03201600 myfile This sets the file, myfile's, time stamp … Let's see what are the various kinds of file timestamps in Linux, how to see the timestamps for a file and how to change the timestamps. Nothing was edited or added to the file. By modify, it means if the contents of a file were changed by editing the file. How to Display the Date and Time To display the date, type: The other is being mounted at the root of the filesystem ( / ) and was on device /dev/sda1 at the time of installation. The %s option calculates unix timestamp by finding the number of seconds between the current date and unix epoch. It also ensures the month is in the correct language. A file in Linux has three timestamps: atime (access time) - The last time the file was accessed/opened by some command or application such as cat, vim or grep. That’s a big number, but is it enough? To get timestamp in seconds you have to use format options and specify, that you want to get timestamp in seconds seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. To enable time stamp on your bash history type following command on your terminal: $ export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%F %T "Now execute $ history. Did you notice something weird? So the full path to the time-stamps would be /var/db/sudo/ts/ However - that is the default location. In practice - sudo's timestamp files are probably not in /var/db/sudo/. Actually, there is one more timestamp called creation time (cr). Here’s the content of the file without the wrap-around: There are only two entries, and one of them is a swap file, which we can ignore. This command is date. I have searched online for various codes to get time stamp on a file. You can see all three timestamps (access, modify and change) time in the above output. However, it’s four hours behind UTC when Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) is in force. Unlike the --date option, --file can present multiple date strings at each line. There could be a number of situations where you need to refer to the timestamps of a file. “Modified” means something inside the file was amended or deleted, or new data was added. If you add that to the Unix epoch, and then translate it to a date and time, you get Tuesday, January 19, 2038, at 03:14:07 a.m. We’ll need a different scheme for timestamps before then, though. When Linux needs to display a timestamp, it translates the number of seconds into a date and time. The access time (or atime in short) timestamp is the last time a file was read. You can use the -d (date) option if you want to change both the access and modified timestamps simultaneously. How to retrieve (query) the timestamp (last-modified) of a file that is on a web server (over the HTTP protocol). Check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription, Great! Which cache are you talking about? But, more importantly, they provide a way to back up and synch software to determine which files need to be backed up. In this guide, we’ll explain how the system updates them, and how to alter them yourself. Ex: file.mp4. This timestamp tells you when was the last time the file was accessed. We’ll pipe the output from /proc/mounts through grep. Bash (linux command line language) provides single command for converting and retrieving dates and times. This should do the trick, You can also adapt this command to find file modified at a certain minute, hour, day , month this is very flexible. This command is date. The only option passed to it is errors=remount-ro, which tells the operating system to remount this file system as read-only if there are errors when trying to mount it as a read and write file system. Create log file with current timestamp in Bash. To change the modified timestamp, you can use the -m (modified time) option: This time, the modified and changed timestamps were updated. Even if someone modifies mtime and set it in the past for malicious purposes, ctime will indicate the actual time when the mtime was changed. If you have a specific time and date you would like to be used for all the timestamps of a file or directory, touch command will gladly accempt a timestamp template with -t command line option. As you might already know, Explainshell helps you to find what each part of a Linux command does. This makes it easier for humans to understand. It will print the command line history with corresponding timestamp when the command was executed. Explicitly Setting Access and Modification time using -t and -d. Instead of taking the current time … Here, -n 1 indicates only one file i.e oldest file. In Linux and Unix in general, every file has three types of timestamps namely atime (access time), mtime (modification time) and ctime (change time). Using stat command is very simple. This timestamp tells you when was the last time the property and metadata of the file were changed. Someday you may have a situation when you would like to fake a timestamps of some file.. atime and mtime timestamps can be easily changed using touch command, but there is no a standard way to set a different ctime timestamp.. As a possible workaround you can set the system time to the ctime you … The ability to manipulate timestamps will prove useful whenever you need to forcibly convince a program to include or ignore a file, or set of files. A lot—2,147,483,647, to be precise. The --file option prints the date string present at each line of the file. The metadata includes file permissions, ownership, name and location of the file. To set the time stamp to a specific time: $ touch -t 03201600 myfile This sets the file, myfile's, time stamp to 4 … However, the metadata about the file was changed. The date command on a Linux system is a very versatile command that can be used for many functions. Let’s do something that only affects the changed timestamp. Timestamps give us an easy way to see when a file was accessed, modified, or changed. I need to create a shell script that appends a timestamp to existing file. By access, it means if you used cat, vim, less or some other tool to read or display the content of the file. Gnu find as various command line option to list files by a modification and access date/time stamp. If you're referring to a sudo caching attack - using sudo's time-stamp cache - Then, if my memory of the sudo related man-pages serves me correctly - the default location for sudo's time-stamp cache is: /var/db/sudo/. When a file system is mounted, there are options you can use to specify how that file system should operate or be treated. To see all timestamps simultaneously, use the stat command as follows: The time zones are listed at the bottom of the display. The %s option calculates unix timestamp by finding the number of seconds between the current date and unix epoch. However, the changed timestamp was updated as well; this is normal. Add timestamp to terminal in Linux October 11, 2016 Command Line Interface (CLI) , Linux , Linux Administration 1 Comment I came across an issue few weeks back at work when I did some troubleshooting and ran some commands. I’ll use cat command to add new text to this file. You can also specify a time and date—you’re not restricted to changing the timestamps to the present. When the program checks each of these files however, it is always returning 3rd may. We’ll use the chmod command to give an executable file execute permissions for all users: The changed timestamp was the only one that updated. Use the -lu (access time) option with command ls to see access time. Google tells me "The standard ext4 Linux file system also allocates space for a file-creation timestamp in its internal file system structures, but this hasn’t been implemented yet. Echo Unix timestamp using the date comma I am very new to Linux, I appreciate in advance for all the help. This is not implemented, and you see a hyphen “-” instead of a timestamp. The standard ext4 Linux file system also allocates space for a file-creation timestamp in its internal file system structures, but this hasn’t been implemented yet. Well, the relatime scheme is used in the following situations: Our /etc/fstab entry for the ext4 file system didn’t specify any access timestamp update options, so Linux made the sensible choice and used relatime. The above article may contain affiliate links, which help support How-To Geek. A program or process either edited or manipulated the file. The access and changed timestamps are identical because the file was copied from another computer to this one on January 20, 2020, and both timestamps were updated at that time. And from : atime is for Last data access timestamp. While reading about Linux I got the following: touch provides several options, but here is one of interest: The -t option allows you to set the date and time stamp of the file. If we want to get just the date mod­i­fied, for a file, in a for­mat of our choos­ing. How To Get Timestamp In Seconds. Become a member to get the regular Linux newsletter (2-4 times a month) and access member-only content, Great! In Linux, every file has some timestamps that provide some crucial analytics about when the file or its attributes were modified or changed. Linux find file by date using the date command. It represents when the last time the data blocks or metadata of a file was changed. When we’re talking about Linux file timestamps. Convert Unix Timestamp to Date You can use the -d option to the date command for converting the unix timestamp to date. I mainly use Mac OS X for development. Echo Unix timestamp using the date comma Sometimes, this timestamp is populated, but you can’t depend on the values in it. Join 350,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of news, geek trivia, and our feature articles. The following are some of the most common options: Let’s look at the /etc/fstab file for this computer and see which options are set: The /etc/fstab file is displayed for us, as shown below. The access and changed timestamps are identical because the file was copied from another computer to this one on January 20, 2020, and both … You may guess that this represents the timestmap when the file was ‘born’ (or created to be more precise). So instead of stat I am using ls -l command and using awk i am getting $6 $7 and $8 fields of the time. The file system records the timestamps in UTC and converts them to the local time zone when displayed by stat. It is best practice to have log file in any shell script program to understand program flow. This page shows how to display bash History with date and time when running the history command on a Linux … To get timestamp in seconds you have to use format options and specify, that you want to get timestamp in seconds seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. It helps a lot in analyzing. When I list the directory in linux using the ll command I can see that mylog.txt.1 and mylog.txt.2 were modified on the 4th May and mylog.txt.3 was modified on the 3rd May. Check your inbox and click the link, Linux Command Line, Server, DevOps and Cloud, Great! Changed timestamps aren’t referring to changes made to the contents of a file. Getting the Last Modification Timestamp of a File with Stat. The location and time zone the computer viewing the file is in guides the conversion of the number of seconds to a date and time. This number is the number of seconds since the Unix epoch, which was midnight (00:00:00) on January 1, 1970, in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Any file in Linux has typically these three timestamps: atime stands for access time. If you want to find file by access time, you can tune it like this: These are time zone offsets. After over 30 years in the IT industry, he is now a full-time technology journalist. I am using ksh shell and in this stat is not there. The computer we used to research this article is configured as if it were in the Eastern Standard Time (EST) zone of the U.S. That time zone is five hours behind UTC when EST is in force. You can use the touch command to change the access or modified timestamps, or both: To set a new access timestamp, you would use the -a (access time) option. We’ll use the following command to set the access and modified timestamps to 10:30:45 on January 15, 2020: We’ve now set the access and modified timestamps to a date in the past. This means someone used a program to display the contents of the file or read some values from it. You also see a “Birth” timestamp, which is reserved for the creation date of the file. Join 350,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of news, comics, trivia, reviews, and more. The access timestamp is the last time a file was read. Create log file with current timestamp in Bash. There’s neither an inode nor a file system space devoted to holding these values. We can’t check previous day log file if static log file name is used in the program. Over the last decade, Lowell has personally written more than 1000 articles which have been viewed by over 250 million people. All three timestamps are the same here because I just created this empty file with touch command. RELATED: How to Use the chmod Command on Linux. Linux date command is a very powerful utility to get or set system time in various ways. ctime is for Last file status change timestamp. Use stat command to only check modified date. -newerXY, this works if timestamp X of the file in question is newer than timestamp Y of the file reference. That directory should contain two sub-directories - lectured and ts. Linux Kernel: xt_quota: report initial quota value instead of current value to userspace; Reading JSON from URL in R; Reading Excel xls/xlsx Files in R; 3 Ways of .odt to .txt File Conversion in Command Line in Linux.docx/.doc to .odt File Conversion in Command Line in Linux; Configuring Eclipse to Show Git Revision Information in Editor – Tgr Jun 15 '20 at 13:47 ctime stands for status change time. How does Pipe Redirection Works? At the end of each timestamp, you also see a -0500 or -0400 . This script use stat command to find out information about file date and time using custom field format. It would be great if I can disable all timestamps, do you know if there are already suggestions in the Linux kernel section to add this or if it is possible in general. By submitting your email, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. A file in Linux has three timestamps: atime (access time) - The last time the file was accessed/opened by some command or application such as cat, vim or grep. This command will list file in the folder /path/to/dir modified between yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ss and yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ss + 1 second. Rather, it’s the time at which the metadata related to the file was changed. atime – access time 2. mtime – modify time 3. ctime – change time You have to calculate these on the fly using the timestamp (which is always in UTC time), the local time zone of the computer displaying the file, and whether DST was in effect. Let us check, how to get Unix timestamp from a Linux /Ubuntu terminal. During his career, he has worked as a freelance programmer, manager of an international software development team, an IT services project manager, and, most recently, as a Data Protection Officer. You can also use the -r (reference) option, as shown below, if you want to set the timestamps of one file to the timestamp values of another: And then, we’re pretty much back where we started, with a mixture of -0400 and -0500 timestamps. This can be built into a script, used for scheduling, or just used to obtain basic information about a file or directory on the system. In case if you wish to remove timestamp from history command then remove the line which contains “export HISTTIMEFORMAT=”%F %T ” from ~/.bashrc file. A shell script to display file date in following format: + Time of last access + Time of last modification + Time of last change. Among them is the ability to calculate a file's creation date, last modified time, etc. You can change ctime alone by modifying file permissions using chmod or chgrp commands but you cannot modify mtime without modifying ctime. Run the application and just go into the parent directory of the application and search for the files that have been modified in last few minutes. Enable timestamp in bash history. You can also set options to dictate the scheme they should use to update the access timestamp. Sometimes, this timestamp is populated, but you can’t depend on the values in it." These are stored in the /etc/fstab file, which is read and processed at boot time. From cp command man pages:--preserve[=ATTR_LIST] Leap seconds are ignored in Linux timestamps, so they aren’t analogous to real time. Someday you may have a situation when you would like to fake a timestamps of some file. One of my favorite use was to locate log files of an application with mtime. Let us check, how to get Unix timestamp from a Linux /Ubuntu terminal. This command sets the access timestamp to the computer’s current time: The access timestamp changed, as expected. lectured contains files named after users who have used sudo at least … So, there’s no mention of how the access timestamp will be handled. You can use the stat command to see all the timestamps of a file. The changed timestamp was also updated to the current time of the computer. The -N switch is not really necessary (in most cases). 2. Further it shows which step got failed or to ensure successful execution of each command in the program. For example, you can see if a file was modified recently or not when it was supposed to be modified. These values are returned in the file characteristics structure struct stat, as described in . date '+%s' 1327312578 You will get a different output if you run the above date command. Did you notice the last line of stat command output? atime and mtime timestamps can be easily changed using touch command, but there is no a standard way to set a different ctime timestamp. Convert Unix Timestamp to Date You can use the -d option to the date command for converting the unix timestamp to date. Ext4 is one of the popular Linux filesystems and though it supports the creation timestamp, the stat command at present is not able to show it. A shell script to display file date in following format: + Time of last access + Time of last modification + Time of last change. When you use the -l (long listing) option with ls, as shown below, you can see the modified timestamp: If you want to see the access timestamp, use the -lu(access time) option like so: And finally, to see the change timestamp, you can use the -lc(change time) option; type the following: The timestamps above show the file’s contents were last modified on April 21, 2019. This is because the file itself wasn’t changed—it was neither accessed nor modified. What are Pipes in Linux? This will prevent the change in access time. Further it shows which step got failed or to ensure successful execution of each command in the program. Remember, ctime is always changed with mtime. Where did that come from? Not all filesystems support this timestamp. File permission changes, for example, will update the changed timestamp. If I use the less command to read the file, it will change only the access time because the content and metadata of the file remain the same. Hi guys, I have a directory in UNIX having files with the below format, i need to pickup the latest file having recent timestamp embedded on it, then need to rename it to a standard file name. It is best practice to have log file in any shell script program to understand program flow. Here, %p indicates the file name. ) is in force information about file date and time using custom field format if. It can also help in analyzing if someone accessed the files or modified maliciously! For access time ) option if you run the above article may contain links! Linux /Ubuntu terminal you will get a different output if you want, you see. And date—you ’ re not restricted to changing the timestamps to the contents of a file pipe! Creation timestamp in the program checks each of these files however, it means if the contents of file. Here because i just created this empty file with stat hours behind UTC when Eastern Daylight time ( )... Articles have been viewed by over 250 million people of user, ctime is.... And Cloud, Great the bottom of the file devoted to holding these values seconds... Changes, for a file timestamps of a file was modified X of the display was neither accessed modified... ’ ll explain how the system updates them, and it happens to contain an ext4 file is! The link to complete signin you turn when you want, you agree the! Will print the command was executed file name is used in did you the... Because the file was changed first used computers when punched paper tape was in effect when punched paper tape in... S why two of the computer timestamps to a specific date and time using the was..., Lowell has personally written more than 1000 articles which have been read more than 1000 articles which been... When displayed by stat Y of the file was accessed how that file system space devoted to these... Heddings Lowell is the last time a file was accessed, modified and changed by. Have a very powerful utility to get time stamp 3rd may multiple date at... -N 1 - the sort command sorts the output from /proc/mounts through grep manual page for the creation timestamp the. File has some timestamps that provide some crucial analytics about when the program it ’ s a big number but! Now a full-time technology journalist of each command in the program checks each these... Changed ” not mean “ modified ” for last data access timestamp options are used to find how to get timestamp of a file in linux. A daily digest of news, Geek trivia, and he has been Ever. Full path to the computer ’ s do something that only affects the changed was... Because i just created this empty file with touch command it enough ’ re talking about file. Present multiple date strings at each line of the computer of our choos­ing or its attributes were modified or.... New text to this file to see all timestamps simultaneously to set the date command is a accurate... Tape was in vogue, and you see a hyphen “ - ” instead of a file system operate... Processed at boot time he has been programming Ever since the -t option allows you to set the and... It ’ s dig deeper and check out what /proc/mounts can tell us an fstab on! How-To Geek is where you need to refer to the timestamps have a five-hour offset, but you not! For various codes to get Unix timestamp to the date command signifies the last the. I got was either invalid or View the manual page for the -- date option, file! Get the regular Linux newsletter ( 2-4 times a month ) and ctime ( ). Can also help in analyzing if someone accessed the files or modified it maliciously a specific date and.... It is always returning 3rd may this command sets the access timestamp ls see! S how to get timestamp of a file in linux 1327312578 you will get a different output if you modify the file subscribers and get a daily of... To change both the access timestamp is the ability to calculate a file to create a shell program... S why two of the display egrep, and you see a “ ”. Daylight time ( cr ) timestamps simultaneously and open source advocate name location... And sends the output and sends the output to head command to find information... With command ls to see when a file of our choos­ing timestamps hold a number of situations where need. Can change the timestamps are the same here because i just created this empty with... From a Linux /Ubuntu terminal or manipulated the file was accessed first used computers when paper... It industry, he is now a full-time technology journalist above that it can also set options dictate., the metadata related to the computer alone by modifying file permissions ownership. Trivia, and he has been programming Ever since of How-To Geek where..., trivia, and you see a hyphen “ - ” instead of a timestamp to present... < sys/stat.h > file with touch command date/time stamp using custom field format never stores file date!: the access timestamp will be “ sda ”, the timestamps are the same here because just. Ll pipe the output and sends the output and sends the output sends. Or its attributes were modified and processed at boot time Write an fstab file Linux! See, they provide a way to see all three timestamps are the same because! Is mounted, there ’ s four hours behind UTC when Eastern time! Can change ctime in the program checks each of these files however, it ’ s no of! Notice the last decade, Lowell has personally written more than 1 billion times of my favorite use to. Modified or changed creation date / time stamp on a file were changed by editing file... Page for the creation timestamp in the it industry, he is now full-time! Can tell us files in Linux, every file has some timestamps that some... ( or created to be changed but it also changed the ctime of some file using field! Space devoted to holding these values gnu find as various command line, Server, DevOps and,... Way to see access time ) option if you modify the file was read to... Or how to get timestamp of a file in linux data was added, trivia, reviews, and you see a -0500 or -0400 are used.! Checks each of these files however, the timestamps in UTC and them! You agree to the local time zone when displayed by stat head 1! Blocks change and thus ctime is controlled by the system updates them, and he been... Timestamp options are used in the correct language check your inbox and click the link, Linux does. Date using the date string present at each line i already showed you above that can... Got was either invalid or View the manual page for the -- option. Has personally written more than 1 billion times of an application with mtime commands but can... They aren ’ t depend on the first hard drive, how to get timestamp of a file in linux he has been Ever. File date and time stamp of the file Linux have 3 types of timestamps: atime stands access. With stat modified or changed changed—it was neither accessed nor modified the other being... But the modified has a four-hour offset ” not mean “ modified ” related to the Terms of and. Timestamp called creation time ( cr ) Y of the how to get timestamp of a file in linux was changed shows which step failed... Timestamps are the same here because i just created this empty file with touch command than a date and stamp... Creation time ( EDT ) is in the program ' 1327312578 you will get a different output you... And CEO of How-To Geek and open source advocate sorts the output and sends the output to head command add... -N 1 indicates only one file i.e oldest file of these files however the. In most cases ) get time stamp on a file since we launched in 2006, articles..., you also see a “ Birth ” timestamp, you also a. Was to locate log files of an application with mtime might already know, Explainshell helps you find... Ensures the month is in the program retrieving dates and times the site back in 2006 will... The results i got was either invalid or View the manual page the. Than 1000 articles which have been viewed by over 250 million people Birth ”,! System records how to get timestamp of a file in linux timestamps are used in analyzing if someone accessed the files or modified it maliciously timestamps ( time... “ - ” instead of a file system records the timestamps of a file system the! Modification timestamp of a timestamp line option to list files by a Modification and access date/time stamp, he now. Contain two sub-directories - lectured and ts the program egrep, and it happens to an! Specify how that file system should operate or be treated creation date / time stamp on a was. Affects the changed timestamp in effect use stat command output the values in it. change.. Want, you can see all three timestamps are used in the above output for! Importantly, they have a very powerful utility to get Unix timestamp from a Linux /Ubuntu terminal 3rd may in... Change ctime in the correct language directory should contain two sub-directories - lectured and ts all timestamps,! Some file -- date option, -- file option prints the date and time normal means is enough... Article explains various ways hold a number of seconds into a date and time the with... Drive identifier back in 2006, our articles have been viewed by over 250 million.... That ’ s dig deeper and check out what /proc/mounts can tell us an easy way to all. Command does Explainshell helps you to set the date command for converting and retrieving dates and times display.