Display Information About File - Stat

In Unix/Linux world everything is treated as files. whether it is a devices, directories and sockets — all of these are files.

Stat command displays file or file system status.

[Prabhat@Server1 Archive]$ stat 1_16470_587807474.arc
File: `1_16470_587807474.arc'
Size: 208514560 Blocks: 407664 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: fd02h/64770d Inode: 17006596 Links: 1
Access: (0640/-rw-r-----) Uid: ( 500/ oracle) Gid: ( 500/ dba)
Access: 2010-06-12 23:28:58.000000000 -0700
Modify: 2010-06-12 23:31:22.000000000 -0700
Change: 2010-06-12 23:31:22.000000000 -0700

Details of Linux Stat Command Output

* File: `1_16470_587807474.arc’ – Name of the file.
* Size: 208514560 – File size in bytes.
* Blocks: 407664 – Total number of blocks used by this file.
* IO Block: 4096 – IO block size for this file.
* regular file – Indicates the file type. This indicates that this is a regular file. Following are available file types.

o regular file. ( ex: all normal files ).
o directory. ( ex: directories ).
o socket. ( ex: sockets ).
o symbolic link. ( ex: symbolic links. )
o block special file ( ex: hard disk ).
o character special file. ( ex: terminal device file ).

* Device: fd02h/64770d – Device number in hex and device number in decimal
* Inode: 17006596 – Inode number is a unique number for each file which is used for the internal maintenance by the file system.
* Links: 1 – Number of links to the file
* Access: (0640/-rw-r-----): Access specifier displayed in both octal and character format. Let us see explanation about both the format.
* Uid: ( 500/oracle) – File owner’s user id and user name are displayed.
* Gid: ( 500/dba) – File owner’s group id and group name are displayed.
* Access: 2010-06-12 23:28:58.000000000 -0700 – Last access time of the file.
* Modify: 2010-06-12 23:31:22.000000000 -0700 – Last modification time of the file.
* Change: 2010-06-12 23:31:22.000000000 -0700 – Last change time of the inode data of that file.

Stat – Display Information About Directory

You can use the same command to display the information about a directory as shown below.

[Prabhat@Server1 oradata]$ stat Archive
File: `Archive'
Size: 12288 Blocks: 24 IO Block: 4096 directory
Device: fd02h/64770d Inode: 16990209 Links: 2
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 500/ oracle) Gid: ( 500/ dba)
Access: 2009-11-02 23:43:22.000000000 -0800
Modify: 2010-06-13 05:26:54.000000000 -0700
Change: 2010-06-13 05:26:54.000000000 -0700