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    How to Find File Creation Time (crtime) in Linux

    By 2 Mins Read

    File creation time is stored in inode in EXT4 file system. An earlier version of EXT files systems doesn’t support file creation time.

    There is a crtime (create time) timestamp in the debugfs stat output. finally EXT4 supports create time just like btime in NTFS windows.

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    Follow below instructions to how to find file creation time. Select an existing file or create a new file for testing. For this example, I am using an existing file.

    Step 1 – Find Inode Number of File

    First of all, find the inode number of any file using the following command on terminal.

    $ ls -i /var/log/secure

13377 /var/log/syslog

    Step 2 – Find File Creation Time (crtime)

    After getting the inode number of file, Use debugfs command with inode number stats following by disk path.

    $ debugfs -R 'stat <inode_number>' /dev/sda1
    Implementation:
    $ debugfs -R 'stat <13377>' /dev/sda1

debugfs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Inode: 13377   Type: regular    Mode:  0600   Flags: 0x80000
Generation: 2326794244    Version: 0x00000000:00000001
User:     0   Group:     0   Size: 223317
File ACL: 0    Directory ACL: 0
Links: 1   Blockcount: 440
Fragment:  Address: 0    Number: 0    Size: 0
 ctime: 0x5230b7ae:55efa068 -- Thu Sep 12 00:04:22 2013
 atime: 0x5230b7ae:55efa068 -- Thu Sep 12 00:04:22 2013
 mtime: 0x5230b7ae:55efa068 -- Thu Sep 12 00:04:22 2013
crtime: 0x4eeacc8a:0948eb58 -- Fri Dec 16 10:13:54 2011
Size of extra inode fields: 28
Extended attributes stored in inode body:
  selinux = "system_u:object_r:var_log_t:s000" (31)
EXTENTS:
(0-24): 35008-35032, (25-54): 164224-164253

    Find the entry of crtime in above output. This is the actual file creation time.

    References:
    Read more about ext4 file system: https://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Disk_Layout

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    9 Comments

    2. shell on

      Hi ,

      I wanted to to copies files from one location to another which is created on time 00:05 .

      File names := a****.txt (after a ther is incremental number but i need to choose file with time)
      Could you please suggest as soon as …..

      Reply
    3. Akash on

      sudo debugfs -R ‘stat ‘ /dev/sddb1

      I am using google cloude shell and above command returns same results as “debugfs 1.43.4 (31-Jan-2017)” for all file inode number

      Reply
      • Wakar Khan on

        I am also retrieving the creation date of file but your suggested is not working for me and getting “Bad magic number in super-block while opening the file system” . Please suggest appropriate solution for this.

        Reply
    5. Benjamin Abbott-Scott on

      You can also simply specify filename (at least on CentOS and AmazonOS) instead of inode:

      $ sudo debugfs -R ‘stat /bin/ls’ /dev/xvda1
      …
      crtime: 0x57699f20:712d39fc — Tue Jun 21 13:10:08 2016
      …

      Reply
      • Wakar Khan on

        I am also retrieving the creation date of file but your suggested command is not working for me and getting “Bad magic number in super-block while opening the file system” . Please suggest appropriate solution for this.

        Reply
    7. kn on

      On my system, which is Ubuntu 16.04.2, the ctime, mtime, and crtime come-up the same when I run your debugfs command. The atime field is also incorrect.

      However, did find a script that is supposed to output the correct crtime. Here’s the link:

      https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/92748

      Will check-it and post back the results.

      Reply
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