Change file creation date

Question

Can I change creation date of some file using Python in Linux?

Solution 1

Linux and Unix file system stores :

File access, change and modification time (remember UNIX or Linux never stores file creation time, this is favorite question asked in UNIX/Linux sys admin job interview)

Understanding UNIX / Linux file systems

Solution 2

You can use os.utime to change access and modify time but not the creation date.

Solution 3

It's no longer true that Linux doesn't support creation time. See:

• https://askubuntu.com/questions/470134/how-do-i-find-the-creation-time-of-a-file

Note this specific answer to view C-code that displays the field:

• https://askubuntu.com/a/980750/116108

If the author of that post can help I might be able to create a wrapper with ctypes to modify it from Python.

Solution 4

I am not a UNIX expert, so maybe I'm wrong, but I think that UNIX (or Linux) don't store file creation time.

Solution 5

Check out os.utime

os.utime(file_path,(new_atime,new_mtime))

View more solutions

Comments

[Hanut]

>Set the access and modified times But i need creating date.

[Epcylon]

Quote from the docs on that function: "Set the access and modified times of the file specified by path." .. so you can't use it to set the creation date.

[Ishbir]

It would be nice to add that there the concept of file creation date does not exist in most native *nix filesystems.

[jfs]

Note: there is st_birthtime on some Unix systems such as FreeBSD.

[jfs]

it doesn't change creation time as @Nadia Alramli's answer explicitly says.

[jfs]

you can extract crtime from ext4 fs using xstat function

[Gringo Suave]

It's no longer true that Linux no longer supports creation time. See my answer below.

[mirh]

The thing is, while ext4 do support this crtime attribute, AFAIU that's not supposed to hold the same meaning than in other (or just Windows?) file systems. It's a specific property of the inode, not the contents itself. And I think for this reason there isn't any API to change or set it (which was actually what OP had asked).

[churchill]

did you ever created it? I would like to modify ctimes in Linux