Difference between revisions of "Mactime output"
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| − | == | + | ==mactime== |
| − | [[ | + | [[mactime]] is a tool that reads [[file metadata]] from a text file and sorts the data to create a time line of file activity can be created. The resulting time line is plain text with several columns. This page describes what each column means. This program was originally created to analyze Unix file systems and therefore some of the columns have little meaning when analyzing a Windows file system. |
Revision as of 18:45, 11 September 2008
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mactime
mactime is a tool that reads file metadata from a text file and sorts the data to create a time line of file activity can be created. The resulting time line is plain text with several columns. This page describes what each column means. This program was originally created to analyze Unix file systems and therefore some of the columns have little meaning when analyzing a Windows file system.
Example Output
Columns:
Date/Time Size Activity Unix User Group inode File Name
(Bytes) Type Permissions Id Id
Example:
[...]
Thu Aug 21 2003 01:20:38 512 m.c -/-rwxrwxrwx 0 0 4 /file1.dat
900 m.c -/-rwxrwxrwx 0 0 8 /file3.dat
Thu Aug 21 2003 01:21:36 512 m.c -/-rwxrwxrwx 0 0 12 /_ILE5.DAT (deleted)
Thu Aug 21 2003 01:22:56 512 .a. -/-rwxrwxrwx 0 0 4 /file1.dat
[...]
Date/Time
The first column is the date and time of the activity. If the following line is for activity during the same second as the previous line, then the time is not duplicated. We can see this in the above example. Both 'file1.dat' and 'file3.dat' had activity at the same time.
File Size
The second column is the size of the file (in bytes).
Activity Type
The third column describes the activity type. This column can be the source of confusion. It contains the letters 'm', 'a', and 'c'. Each represents a time associated with the file and the confusion can exist because different file systems have different file times. Use the following table to determine what time is being shown:
MAC Meaning by File System
| File System | m | a | c |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ext2/3 | Modified | Accessed | Changed |
| FAT | Written | Accessed | Created |
| NTFS | File Modified | Accessed | MFT Modified |
| UFS | Modified | Accessed | Changed |
Note: Some file systems have additional times that will not be displayed. For example, Ext2/3 has a 'deleted' time that is not displayed and NTFS has a Created time that is not displayed. NTFS also has another set of times that are stored in the $FILE_NAME attribute that are not displayed in the time line. The $FILE_NAME times can be viewed using the istat tool.
Unix Permissions
The fourth column is the permissions of the file (in Unix format). In this example, we have a FAT file system and therefore all permissions are displayed (because FAT does not have a notion of permissions outside of "read only").
User & Group IDs
The fifth and sixth columns contain the User and Group Ids. These will be non-zero only on Ext2/3 or UFS file systems.
inode
The seventh column is the "inode" or metadata address of the file.
File Name
The eighth column is the file name. If the file name is not allocated deleted, then it will have "(deleted)" after the name. This can be seen in the previous example. If the name is not allocated, but the metadata for the file is allocated, then it will have "(realloc)" in the name. This shows that the metadata associated with this file name may not be valid any more because it could correspond to a different file.
