How to Find File Creation Time (crtime) in Linux

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.

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

View 9 Comments

9 Comments

Christopher on December 2, 2019 6:40 am
How to find all files creation date and time in unix ??
shell on September 30, 2019 12:28 pm
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 …..
Akash on March 26, 2019 9:07 am
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
- Wakar Khan on November 1, 2021 7:10 am
  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.
aaf2 on December 16, 2018 2:35 pm
sick! why so complicated? why linux prorammers not added it as standard??
Benjamin Abbott-Scott on March 29, 2018 6:59 pm
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
…
- Wakar Khan on November 1, 2021 7:12 am
  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.
Anoop on January 10, 2018 7:04 am
Rahul,
That was extremely helpful and very clear.
Thanks a tonne!
Anoop
A fellow Linux enthusiast!
kn on July 10, 2017 12:56 pm
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.