stat¶

show filesystem metadata about a file

GNU stat examples¶

Show permissions, modify date, ownership and long filename¶

stat -c "%a/%A  %y %G(%g):%U(%u) %N" /srv/log/apache2/

Sum file sizes¶

stat -c '%s' *2016* | awk '{sum += $1} END {print sum}'

Generate chown commands¶

If you've ever messed up permissions on one service or data replica and need to repair them without installing acl for getfacl and setfacl, this can work:

find whatever-dir -print0 | xargs -0 stat -c "sudo chown %g:%u %N"

GNU stat -c variables¶

This section is taken from man stat

The valid format sequences for files (without --file-system):¶

%A - access rights in human readable form
%a - access rights in octal (note '#' and '0' printf flags)
%b - number of blocks allocated (see %B)
%B - the size in bytes of each block reported by %b
%C - SELinux security context string
%d - device number in decimal
%D - device number in hex
%F - file type
%f - raw mode in hex
%g - group ID of owner
%G - group name of owner
%h - number of hard links
%i - inode number
%m - mount point
%n - file name
%N - quoted file name with dereference if symbolic link
%o - optimal I/O transfer size hint
%s - total size, in bytes
%t - major device type in hex, for character/block device special files
%T - minor device type in hex, for character/block device special files
%u - user ID of owner
%U - user name of owner
%w - time of file birth, human-readable; - if unknown
%W - time of file birth, seconds since Epoch; 0 if unknown
%x - time of last access, human-readable
%X - time of last access, seconds since Epoch
%y - time of last data modification, human-readable
%Y - time of last data modification, seconds since Epoch
%z - time of last status change, human-readable
%Z - time of last status change, seconds since Epoch

Valid format sequences for file systems:¶

%a - free blocks available to non-superuser
%b - total data blocks in file system
%c - total file nodes in file system
%d - free file nodes in file system
%f - free blocks in file system
%i - file system ID in hex
%l - maximum length of filenames
%n - file name
%s - block size (for faster transfers)
%S - fundamental block size (for block counts)
%t - file system type in hex
%T - file system type in human readable form