The ls program will display mtime if you use "ls -l". And you can get atime or ctime with "ls -lu" or "ls -lc". But ls uses a strange format. It displays the month and day in all cases. If the timestamp is recent, it also displays hour and minute. If the timestamp is older than 6 months, it display the year instead of hour and minute. A clever script can reformat this to year, month, day, hour, and minute. But ls will not display the seconds. The gnu version of ls (which is usually the only version on linux) does have extended options like --fulltime. But these extended options are non-standard and won't be available on other versions of Unix.
The perl language is also non-standard, but perl tends to be available on most versions of unix. For example, a version of perl is supplied with HP-UX and Solaris. Perl can easily display the timestamps of files. Here are some perl one-liners to display atime, mtime, and ctime.
These 4 Users Gave Thanks to Perderabo For This Post:
:D i have a slight problem and would appreciate if someone could clarify the confusion.. i use find alot and so far i have done ok.. but it just struck me a couple of days ago that I am not quite sure what the difference between the modification time and the change time as in ctime and mtime and... (3 Replies)
i have used all forms of the unix find command.. and right now this is the only command i can think of that might have this option..:
if i use mtime i am looking at a time interval.. but if i wanted to find out intervals of access, change and modification according to when a file changed size... (4 Replies)
Hey,
First of all I want to know How do I see the atime of a file ?? Whats the command ??
I think ls -l shows the last modified time right ? Because when I use cat to read a file, the timestamp shown by ls -l does not change.
Its not ls -lu ! man ls did not help ! How do I see the last... (8 Replies)
Hi
I've made some test with perl script to learn more about mtime...
So, my question is :
Why the mtime from findfind /usr/local/sbin -ctime -1 -mtime -1 \( -name "*.log" -o -name "*.gz" \) -print are not the same as mtime from unix/linux in ls -ltr or in stat() function in perl : stat -... (2 Replies)
hi, in trying to maintain your directories, one needs to do some housekeeping like removing old files. the tool "find" comes in handy. but how would you decide which option to use when it comes to, say, deleting files that are older than 5 days?
mtime - last modified
atime - last accessed... (4 Replies)
I need to sort through a volume that contains video files by access time and delete files that have not been accessed over x days. I have to use the access time as video files are originals that do not get modified, just read
Testing commands on a local test folder...
$ date
Wed Sep 28... (10 Replies)
Hi,
ctime is the inode change time. If reading a file, its atime will be updated, which should cause inode member i_atime changed, which is an inode change. So ctime should also be updated. But if I try to ls a directory on redhat, only the directory atime gets updated, not ctime. Why?
THANKS! (2 Replies)
It is widely documented that on zfs atime updates the access time on zfs.
Where is the access time updated on Solaris 11.2?
If I create file atimetest.txt under rpool/export/home:
# zfs list rpool/export/home
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
rpool/export/home 13.3G ... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: jabberwocky
5 Replies
LEARN ABOUT REDHAT
tmpwatch
TMPWATCH(8) System Administrator's Manual TMPWATCH(8)NAME
tmpwatch - removes files which haven't been accessed for a period of time
SYNOPSIS
tmpwatch [-u|-m|-c] [-faqstv] [--verbose] [--force] [--all] [--test]
[--fuser ] [--atime|--mtime|--ctime] [--quiet] <hours> <dirs>
DESCRIPTION
tmpwatch recursively removes files which haven't been accessed for a given number of hours. Normally, it's used to clean up directories
which are used for temporary holding space such as /tmp.
When changing directories, tmpwatch is very sensitive to possible race conditions and will exit with an error if one is detected. It does
not follow symbolic links in the directories it's cleaning (even if a symbolic link is given as its argument), will not switch filesystems,
and only removes empty directories and regular files.
By default, tmpwatch dates files by their atime (access time), not their mtime (modification time). If files aren't being removed when ls
-l implies they should be, use ls -u to examine their atime to see if that explains the problem.
If the --atime, --ctime or --mtime options are used in combination, the decision about deleting a file will be based on the maximum of this
times.
The hours parameter defines the threshold for removing files. If the file has not been accessed for hours hours, the file is removed. Fol-
lowing this, one or more directories may be given for tmpwatch to clean up.
OPTIONS -u, --atime
Make the decision about deleting a file based on the file's atime (access time). This is the default.
-m, --mtime
Make the decision about deleting a file based on the file's mtime (modification time) instead of the atime.
-c, --ctime
Make the decision about deleting a file based on the file's ctime (inode change time) instead of the atime; for directories, make
the decision based on the mtime.
-a, --all
Remove all file types, not just regular files and directories.
-d, --nodirs
Do not attempt to remove directories, even if they are empty.
-f, --force
Remove files even if root doesn't have write access (akin to rm -f).
-t, --test
Doesn't remove files, but goes through the motions of removing them. This implies -v.
-s, --fuser
Attempt to use the "fuser" command to see if a file is already open before removing it. Not enabled by default. Does help in some
circumstances, but not all. Dependent on fuser being installed in /sbin.
-v, --verbose
Print a verbose display. Two levels of verboseness are available -- use this option twice to get the most verbose output.
SEE ALSO cron(1), ls(1), rm(1), fuser(1)WARNINGS
GNU-style long options are not supported on HP-UX.
AUTHORS
Erik Troan <ewt@redhat.com>
Preston Brown <pbrown@redhat.com>
Nalin Dahyabhai <nalin@redhat.com>
4th Berkeley Distribution Wed Nov 28 2001 TMPWATCH(8)