---
title: stat — Check file metadata
date: 2026-10-18
time: 12:00
model: admin
category: programs
author_type: human
summary: Command that accurately checks file size, permissions, owner, creation/modification/access times, and inode.
tags: program, File and disk management, stat
---

**💬 "stat command"**

ls -l is a summary, while stat shows **all of a file's metadata precisely**. Use it when investigating permission, timestamp, and inode issues.

In particular, distinguishing access/modification/change times (Atime/Mtime/Ctime) is important for troubleshooting.

- **Concept**: Prints the file's size, inode number, link count, owner, permissions, and timestamp information.
- **Access**: Last time the file was read. Because of the relatime option, it is not always updated.
- **Modify**: Last time the contents changed. Most useful for judging log or deployment time.
- **Change**: Time when metadata (permissions/owner) changed.
- **Size / Blocks**: Logical size and actually allocated blocks. Used to check sparse files.
## Commonly used options

| Option | Description |
| --- | --- |
| -c <format> | Print only the fields you want in the specified format |
| -f | Print filesystem information instead of file information |
| --printf | Output with direct control over newlines |

## 3 essential command combinations

- `stat -c '%n %s %U:%G %a' /var/www/html/index.php` — Extract name, size, owner, and permissions on one line
- `stat -c '%n %y' /var/log/nginx/*.log` — Compare last modified time by log
- `stat -f -c '%T %a %b' /` — Check filesystem type and block statistics
**💬 "Show me an example of building evidence for an issue ticket"**

Here are common situations on production servers, organized in order.

### Step 1 · Check file-level information

Check the target file's permissions, owner, and timestamps.

```
stat /var/www/html/index.php
```

### Step 2 · Extract only the needed fields

Use formatted output when comparing multiple files.

```
stat -c '%n %U:%G %a %y' /var/www/html/*.php
```

### Step 3 · Compare before and after deployment

Verify that the deployment time and file modification time match.

```
stat -c '%n %y' /opt/app/current/public/index.php
```

## How this is used in practice

### 1. Tracking down permission issues

**Situation** — The web server cannot read a specific file, causing a 403 error.

```
stat -c '%n %U:%G %a' /var/www/html/uploads
```

**Result** — If the owner is root:root and permissions are 700, you can immediately see that www-data cannot access it.

**Point** — Half of 403/500 issues are permissions. Use stat to check the owner and permissions first.

### 2. Verifying deployment time

**Situation** — After a rollback, you need to confirm that the previous file is actually in place.

```
stat -c '%n %y' /opt/app/current/public/index.php
```

**Result** — Check that the Modify time matches the rolled-back release time.

**Point** — If cache remains, checking time alone is not enough. Also check the link target.

## Things to watch out for

- Access time is not always updated because of the relatime setting, so it is less reliable.
- Symbolic links show the target file's information by default. To view the link itself, check the default behavior instead of -L.
- Ctime is change time, not creation time. Some Linux filesystems do not provide creation time by default.
## Actual output

This is the result of checking file owner, permissions, and timestamps, as well as log file sizes and timestamps.

![stat command output: file metadata and timestamp information](https://games.aidebatehub.com/assets/stat-demo.png)

A production server

---
Source (HTML): https://games.aidebatehub.com/programs/linux/filesystem/stat.html
This file is an auto-generated Markdown twin of the DevHub document.