You can extract the ext4 creation times on Fedora 19 systems. Here's mine:
$ uname -a
Linux steelers.net 3.11.1-200.fc19.i686.PAE #1 SMP Sat Sep 14 15:20:42 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
It's clear that the inodes on my ext4 partitions have the creation time. Here's a shell script that determines the inode associated with a filename and then augments the stat output with the creation time by using stap ("systemtap").
NB: This is just a demo and hugely inefficient since a kernel module is created, loaded, and unloaded for every execution. This is also probably very fragile as no error checking is performed. A proper kernel API would be preferable, but this script could be made much more efficient and read the creation times of multiple files/inodes.
[contents of stap_stat.sh]
#/bin/sh
my_inode_str=$(stat --printf="%i" $1)
stap - << end_of_stap_script
global my_offsetof
probe begin {
system("stat $1");
my_offsetof = &@cast(0,"struct ext4_inode_info")->vfs_inode;
}
probe kernel.function("ext4_getattr@fs/ext4/inode.c") {
probe_inode=\$dentry->d_inode;
if (@cast(probe_inode, "struct inode")->i_ino == $my_inode_str) {
my_i_crtime = &@cast(probe_inode - my_offsetof,"struct ext4_inode_info")->i_crtime;
printf("CrTime: %s GMT\n", ctime(@cast(my_i_crtime, "timespec")->tv_sec));
printf("CrTime (nsecs): %d\n", @cast(my_i_crtime, "timespec")->tv_nsec);
exit();
}
}
end_of_stap_script
Here's a demo:
$ ll testfile
ls: cannot access testfile: No such file or directory
$ touch testfile
$ ./stap_stat.sh testfile
File: ‘testfile’
Size: 0 Blocks: 0 IO Block: 4096 regular empty file
Device: fd02h/64770d Inode: 4850501 Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--) Uid: ( 1001/ Rick) Gid: ( 1001/ Rick)
Context: unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0
Access: 2013-09-28 06:17:04.221441084 -0400
Modify: 2013-09-28 06:17:04.221441084 -0400
Change: 2013-09-28 06:17:04.221441084 -0400
Birth: -
CrTime: Sat Sep 28 10:17:04 2013 GMT
CrTime (nsecs): 220441085
$ ll testfile
-rw-rw-r--. 1 Rick Rick 0 Sep 28 06:17 testfile
$ cat - >> testfile
Now is the time ...
$ ll testfile
-rw-rw-r--. 1 Rick Rick 20 Sep 28 06:18 testfile
$ ./stap_stat.sh testfile
File: ‘testfile’
Device: fd02h/64770d Inode: 4850501 Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--) Uid: ( 1001/ Rick) Gid: ( 1001/ Rick)
Context: unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0
Access: 2013-09-28 06:17:04.221441084 -0400
Modify: 2013-09-28 06:18:33.684374740 -0400
Change: 2013-09-28 06:18:33.684374740 -0400
Birth: -
CrTime: Sat Sep 28 10:17:04 2013 GMT
CrTime (nsecs): 220441085
$ cat testfile
Now is the time ...
$ ./stap_stat.sh testfile
File: ‘testfile’
Size: 20 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd02h/64770d Inode: 4850501 Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--) Uid: ( 1001/ Rick) Gid: ( 1001/ Rick)
Context: unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0
Access: 2013-09-28 06:19:12.199349463 -0400
Modify: 2013-09-28 06:18:33.684374740 -0400
Change: 2013-09-28 06:18:33.684374740 -0400
Birth: -
CrTime: Sat Sep 28 10:17:04 2013 GMT
CrTime (nsecs): 220441085
$ mv testfile testfile2
$ ./stap_stat.sh testfile2
File: ‘testfile2’
Size: 20 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd02h/64770d Inode: 4850501 Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--) Uid: ( 1001/ Rick) Gid: ( 1001/ Rick)
Context: unconfined_u:object_r:user_home_t:s0
Access: 2013-09-28 06:19:12.199349463 -0400
Modify: 2013-09-28 06:18:33.684374740 -0400
Change: 2013-09-28 06:20:45.870295668 -0400
Birth: -
CrTime: Sat Sep 28 10:17:04 2013 GMT
CrTime (nsecs): 220441085
$
