The stat command is really useful to gather information from file, directory and file system.
The basic usage of stat is:
~#stat /etc/passwd
File: `/etc/passwd'
Size: 999 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: ca00h/51712d Inode: 845 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2011-05-26 12:14:41.000000000 +0200
Modify: 2011-05-26 12:14:41.000000000 +0200
Change: 2011-05-26 12:14:41.000000000 +0200 |
~#stat /etc/passwd
File: `/etc/passwd'
Size: 999 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: ca00h/51712d Inode: 845 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: 2011-05-26 12:14:41.000000000 +0200
Modify: 2011-05-26 12:14:41.000000000 +0200
Change: 2011-05-26 12:14:41.000000000 +0200
So, without options you can have the following information
File : Size in Bytes
Blocks : Number of blocks used
IO Block : Size in bytes of every block.
Device : The identifier number of your storage device (harddrive, etc.)
Inode : The inode number that the file or directory is linked to.
Access/Modify and change Times : Note that the timestamps also include which time zone that accesses or modifications took place in. in this example +0200 Continue reading »