How to keep timestamp when gsutil cp

Question

I am new to google cloud storage nearline and test it. I intend to use google cloud storage nearline for backup.

I wonder how to keep files timestamp when I do 'gsutil cp' between local and nearline.

gsutil cp localfile gs://mybucket

Then, uploaded file timestamp is set uploaded time. I want to keep original file timestamp.

Answer 1

Sorry, you cannot specify the creation time of an object in GCS. The creation time is always the moment that the object is created in GCS.

You can, however, set extra user metadata on objects that you upload. If you'd like, you can record the original creation time of an object there:

$> gsutil cp -h "x-goog-meta-local-creation-time:Some Creation Time" localfile gs://mybucket

Answer 2

When I attempted to perform copy with the following command, the timestamp (Linux "mtime") of local files gets automatically preserved as "goog-reserved-file-mtime" in metadata on Google Cloud Storage.

gsutil cp -r -P $LOCAL_DIR/* gs://$TARGET_BUCKET &