What is the difference between file modification time and file changed?
mtime is modification time – contents have changed. ctime is status change time – perms and ownership as well as contents. Wikipedia says: * mtime: time of last modification (ls -l), * ctime: time of last status change (ls -lc) and * atime: time of last access (ls -lu). Note that ctime is not the time of file creation.
How to change the time of a file?
Firstly you can set the system time to the ctime you want to impose. Then touch the file and immediately rollback the system time. Unexpected impact: Modification of a system time may cause an unexpected impact!
Is there a way to change the ctime timestamp?
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 want to impose, then touch the file and then restore the system time.
When does change time get updated in Linux?
Modify time gets updated when you whenever update content of a file or save a file. Change time gets updated when the file attributes are changed, like changing the owner, changing the permission or moving it to another filesystem, but will also be updated when you modify a file.
How to update the modification time of a file in Linux?
Change Time: is the time when the file’s inode has been changed. For example, by changing permissions, ownership, file name, number of hard links. How to update the Modification Time of a File in Linux?
Is it possible to change the ctime of a file?
If the file never has its permissions changed, it might happen to hold the creation time, but this is a coincidence. Explicitly changing the file modification time counts as a metadata change, so will also have the side effect of updating the ctime. The information about ctime as a metadata change time is from POSIX.
How to change the timestamp on a Linux file?
ls -l dp.c. If you want to see the access timestamp, use the -lu (access time) option like so: ls -lu dp.c. And finally, to see the change timestamp, you can use the -lc (change time) option; type the following: ls -lc dp.c. The timestamps above show the file’s contents were last modified on April 21, 2019.