GNU bug report logs - #7184
Problems with timestamp on FAT32 directories

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Steven Lee <stlee987 <at> gmail.com>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: Problems with timestamp on FAT32 directories
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 02:06:04 -0700

Hello,

On an IOMega 500 GB Home Network Hard Drive with a FAT32 partition, all 
of the directories are showing up as "1969-12-31 16:00" (or essentially 
no date), but when viewing the directory in Windows Explorer, there is 
no problem.  It doesn't matter if I use 'mkdir' to create a directory or 
create the directory from Windows; the result is the same.  Files are 
okay.  NTFS partitions are okay.  I have not seen this issue reported 
when searching the Internet.  I've using latest Cygwin 1.7.7 release.  
Here's a log of what I've done.

$ mkdir tmp
$ ls -ld tmp
drwxr-xr-x 1 Steven None 0 1969-12-31 16:00 tmp

$ touch test.txt
$ ls -l test.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 Steven None 0 2010-10-10 00:50 test.txt

$ which ls
/usr/bin/ls
$ ls -l /usr/bin/ls
-rwxr-xr-x 1 Steven root 128526 2010-06-25 07:42 /usr/bin/ls

Any idea what could be wrong?

-Steven

Message #8 received at 7184 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: Steven Lee <stlee987 <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 7184 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#7184: Problems with timestamp on FAT32 directories
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 06:05:54 -0600

On 10/10/2010 03:06 AM, Steven Lee wrote:
> On an IOMega 500 GB Home Network Hard Drive with a FAT32 partition, all
> of the directories are showing up as "1969-12-31 16:00" (or essentially
> no date), but when viewing the directory in Windows Explorer,

> Any idea what could be wrong?

There's the issue.  FAT is an inherently metadata-poor file system, 
which lacks a lot of information.  Then Windows mistakenly treats 
stat()'s ctime as creation-time instead of change-time.  Cygwin MUST 
fake timestamps for information that is not present in the native 
filesystem, so it's easier to fake the epoch (0 seconds since Jan 1 
1970, adjusted for your timezone) than it is to fake any other date.  If 
you have further questions, you should raise them with the cygwin list, 
as there is nothing that coreutils can do about the inherent lack of 
information in your filesystem nor with cygwin's choice of how to fake 
that information.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake <at> redhat.com    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

Message #11 received at 7184 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Steven Lee <stlee987 <at> gmail.com>
To: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Cc: 7184 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#7184: Problems with timestamp on FAT32 directories
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 06:24:53 -0700

Hi Eric,

The change-time information is there as it shows up properly in Windows 
Explorer.  In addition, files are okay under Cygwin; the problem is only 
with directories.

FYI, I want to use rsync under Cygwin to backup files but it's causing 
all of my directories to be resetted to the epoch time.

-Steven


On 10/11/2010 5:05 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 10/10/2010 03:06 AM, Steven Lee wrote:
>> On an IOMega 500 GB Home Network Hard Drive with a FAT32 partition, all
>> of the directories are showing up as "1969-12-31 16:00" (or essentially
>> no date), but when viewing the directory in Windows Explorer,
>
>> Any idea what could be wrong?
>
> There's the issue.  FAT is an inherently metadata-poor file system, 
> which lacks a lot of information.  Then Windows mistakenly treats 
> stat()'s ctime as creation-time instead of change-time.  Cygwin MUST 
> fake timestamps for information that is not present in the native 
> filesystem, so it's easier to fake the epoch (0 seconds since Jan 1 
> 1970, adjusted for your timezone) than it is to fake any other date.  
> If you have further questions, you should raise them with the cygwin 
> list, as there is nothing that coreutils can do about the inherent 
> lack of information in your filesystem nor with cygwin's choice of how 
> to fake that information.
>

Message #14 received at 7184 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
To: Steven Lee <stlee987 <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 7184 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#7184: Problems with timestamp on FAT32 directories
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 08:29:56 -0600

[please don't top-post]

On 10/11/2010 07:24 AM, Steven Lee wrote:
> Hi Eric,
>
> The change-time information is there as it shows up properly in Windows
> Explorer. In addition, files are okay under Cygwin; the problem is only
> with directories.

But as I already said, this is not a coreutils issue, but a cygwin 
issue.  If you want it fixed in cygwin, then you need to report it to 
the cygwin folks.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake <at> redhat.com    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

Message #17 received at 7184 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Assaf Gordon <assafgordon <at> gmail.com>
To: 7184 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#7184: Problems with timestamp on FAT32 directories
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 01:16:48 -0600

tags 7184 notabug
close 7184
stop

(triaging old bugs)

On 2010-10-11 8:29 a.m., Eric Blake wrote:
> 
> On 10/11/2010 07:24 AM, Steven Lee wrote:
>>
>> The change-time information is there as it shows up properly in Windows
>> Explorer. In addition, files are okay under Cygwin; the problem is only
>> with directories.
> 
> But as I already said, this is not a coreutils issue, but a cygwin 
> issue.  If you want it fixed in cygwin, then you need to report it to 
> the cygwin folks.
> 

With no further comments in 8 years, I'm closing this bug.

-assaf

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