Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2020 07:27:28 -0400 From: Jerry <jerry@seibercom.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Preserving target file's creation date Message-ID: <20201001072728.000004b6@seibercom.net> In-Reply-To: <202010010424.0914OZ9Y029194@sdf.org> References: <202010010424.0914OZ9Y029194@sdf.org>
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On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 23:24:35 -0500, Scott Bennett via freebsd-questions commented: > On Tue, 29 Sep 2020 13:40:51 +0200 Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> >wrote: > >>On Tue, 29 Sep 2020 06:42:18 -0400, Jerry wrote: >>> I am trying to copy/move one file onto another. I need to preserve >>> the creation date of the target file. I see options to preserve the >>> creation date of the source file, but not the target file. Is it >>> possible? >> >>THis is possible - it's important you do not unlink (remove) >>the original file whose creation time you want to preserve. >>I'm not sure if cp does this while overwriting, but you can >>use shell redirection: >> >> $ cat /path/to/souce/file > /path/to/target/file >> >>Only the modification date will be altered. You can verify >>that using "stat filename". >> >>Note that creation time refers to the inode. Even if you >>re-create a file (remove, then create with the same name), >>you'll probably get a different inode, and therefore a >>different creation time. >> >>If you want to preserve modification and access time, you >>can do so using "cp -p"; to alter them after creation, >>use "touch -m" and "touch -a" respectively. >> > There exists another way that allows one to set the ctime. > Offhand, >I don't have any idea how to do it, but restore(8) certainly does. A >"restore -rf /some/backupmadebydump/file" will restore an entire >filesystem with each file's full set of timestamps intact. Recall >that restore(8) rebuilds the filesystem by engaging the filesystem >code, not by writing to a raw device. > Any ideas what restore does to accomplish that? I found that 'touch -r <source file> <target file>' works. It involves slightly more work than I had intended, but it gets the job done. -- Jerry
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