Get the timestamp of a file on HP?

[Michelle_61]

Hi All,

I want to write a shell script to get the modification timestamp of a file on HP. I cannot use C functions or Perl. The 'ls -l' command is not what I need. What I need is something like below:

START=$(date +%s)

But the 'date' has to be the modification time of a specific file.

Your response will be very helpful to me!

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Michelle:

> I want to write a shell script to get the modification timestamp of a file on HP. I cannot use C functions or Perl.

Why oh why? You really want the 'stat()' function (which LINUX offers as a shell command but HP-UX doesn't).

# perl -le 'for (@ARGV) {print join " ",(stat($_))[9],$_}' file1 file2 ...

If you need to *compare* file modification timestamps you can use the Posix shell's: '-nt' and '-ot' file test operators for comparing newer ('-nt') and older ('-ot') as:

# [ ${file1} -nt ${file2} ] && echo "one newer than two"

Regards!

...JRF...

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Michelle:

OK, I know of yet another potential solution for you. Look Dennis' response in:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1320053

The salient code is thus:

# dumpmsg /usr/lib/nls/msg/C/ls.cat > /tmp/ls.msg

# vi /tmp/ls.msg
[ ...and replace lines 11 and 12 with:
%s
]

# gencat /tmp/ls.cat /tmp/ls.msg

# NLSPATH=%N.cat ls -l file

Regards!

...JRF...

[Michelle_61]

I need to get the exact timestamp of one specific file. The "perl -le 'for (@ARGV) {print join " ",(stat($_))[9],$_}' file" command works perfect. Thanks!

Is the 'perl' command available to the base HP installation, just like the 'ls' command? I need to ensure my script works on all HP systems.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Michelle:

Is the 'perl' command available to the base HP installation, just like the 'ls' command? I need to ensure my script works on all HP systems.

Yes it is.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Dennis Handly]

>JRF: I know of yet another potential solution for you. Look Dennis' response in:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1320053

Actually Michelle wants the format where it is less than 6 months. (Or possibly HH:MM:SS.)

So what I had there was fine.

I'll ask that Michelle's duplicate be removed:
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1447272

[VK2COT]

Hello Michelle,

You already got good advice and solutions.

Please, please do not rely on timestamps in Unix AT ALL. I am not sure what your goal
is, but timestamps are easy to forge.

Let me demonstrate (this is actually part
of my presentation I did when I was teaching
HP-UX junior support team at a large hospital
recently):

# ls -l /etc/motd
-rw------- 1 root sys 842 Jul 16 2008 /etc/motd

# NLSPATH=%N.cat ls -l /etc/motd
-rw------- 1 root sys 842 1216172154 /etc/motd

# perl -le 'for (@ARGV) {print join " ",(stat($_))[9],$_}' /etc/motd
1216172154 /etc/motd

Now, create a new file:

# touch -r /etc/motd /tmp/BLAH

... and its timestamps the timestamps:

# ls -l /tmp/BLAH
-rw------- 1 root sys 0 Jul 16 2008 /tmp/BLAH

# NLSPATH=%N.cat ls -l /tmp/BLAH
-rw------- 1 root sys 0 1216172154 /tmp/BLAH

# perl -le 'for (@ARGV) {print join " ",(stat($_))[9],$_}' /tmp/BLAH
1216172154 /tmp/BLAH

Good luck and if you are doing these checks
for security audits, you need tools
like Tripwire, AIDE, and so on.

Cheers,

VK2COT

[Hakki Aydin Ucar]

>VK2COT:
# NLSPATH=%N.cat ls -l /etc/motd
-rw------- 1 root sys 842 1216172154 /etc/motd

Are you sure this command out ? in my environment I got this:

# ls -l /etc/motd
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 210 Oct 27 2009 /etc/motd
# NLSPATH=%N.cat ls -l /etc/motd
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 210 Oct 27 2009 /etc/motd

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

> Hakki: Are you sure this command out ?

Re-read my comments. You need to create a modified message catalog.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Hakki Aydin Ucar]

>JRF:
Sorry I missed that, thank you for warning.

So, What do you say VK2COT 's infomation about time_stamp unreliability ?
I am totally surprised.

[Hakki Aydin Ucar]

>VK2COT: do not rely time stamp

Eventually -c option works to find out real time stamp:

#ls -ld /tmp/blah
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 0 Oct 27 2009 /tmp/blah

# ls -lc /tmp/blah
-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 0 Sep 13 16:41 /tmp/blah

[Michelle_61]

Thanks everybody, for the very good advice!

My real intention is to create a cache file and refresh it based on a certain timeout value.

Thanks again!

[Dennis Handly]

>Hakki: What do you say VK2COT's information about time_stamp unreliability?

It's correct. But if you want to depend on it, you need to make sure the file isn't writable.
It also may be completely unrelated to what Michelle wants.

>I am totally surprised.

Isn't it obvious? :-)

>Eventually -c option works to find out real time stamp:

There are three timestamps, it depends on what you want. -c provides the inode change time, rather than the content change time.