On Unix-like operating systems, the stat command displays the detailed status of a particular file or a file system.
This page describes the GNU/Linux version of stat.
Syntax
stat [OPTION]… FILE…
Options
The valid format sequences for files (without –filesystem):
- Syntax
- Examples
- Related commands
- Linux commands help
Valid format sequences for file systems:
Examples
stat index.htm
Reports the status of file index.htm, displaying results similar to the following output:
File: `index.htm’ Size: 17137 Blocks: 40 IO Block: 8192 regular file Device: 8h/8d Inode: 23161443 Links: 1 Access: (0644/-rw-r–r–) Uid: (17433/comphope) Gid: ( 32/ www) Access: 2007-04-03 09:20:18.000000000 -0600 Modify: 2007-04-01 23:13:05.000000000 -0600 Change: 2007-04-02 16:36:21.000000000 -0600
stat -f /dev/sda
With the -f option, stat can return the status of an entire file system. Here, it returns the status of the first hard disk. Output resembles the following:
File: “/dev/sda” ID: 0 Namelen: 255 Type: tmpfs Block size: 4096 Fundamental block size: 4096 Blocks: Total: 2560 Free: 2560 Available: 2560 Inodes: Total: 126428 Free: 125966
stat –format “%A” /var/log/syslog
Display only the access restrictions, in human-readable form, of the system log /var/log/syslog. Output resembles the following:
-rw-r—–
…which indicates that the file is readable and writable by root, readable by the owning group (in this case the admin group), and not accessible at all by others.
Related commands
ls — List the contents of a directory or directories.