Get file creation time with Python on linux

Question

os.stat returns st_mtime and st_ctime attributes, the modification time is st_mtime and st_ctime "change time" on POSIX. is there any function that return the creation time of a file using python and under Linux?

Answer 1

You probably can't.:

3.1)  How do I find the creation time of a file?        You can't - it isn't stored anywhere.  Files have a last-modified       time (shown by "ls -l"), a last-accessed time (shown by "ls -lu")       and an inode change time (shown by "ls -lc"). The latter is often       referred to as the "creation time" - even in some man pages -       but that's wrong; it's also set by such operations as mv, ln,       chmod, chown and chgrp.        The man page for "stat(2)" discusses this. 

Answer 2

try:

st_birthtime 

It isnt' guaranteed to be available on all systems though. From the docs:

On some Unix systems (such as Linux), the following attributes may also be available: st_blocks (number of blocks allocated for file), st_blksize (filesystem blocksize), st_rdev (type of device if an inode device). st_flags (user defined flags for file).

On other Unix systems (such as FreeBSD), the following attributes may be available (but may be only filled out if root tries to use them): st_gen (file generation number), st_birthtime (time of file creation).

http://docs.python.org/2/library/os.html#os.stat