change file creation time on msdosfs

[Robert Bonomi]

> From owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org  Thu Aug 26 14:33:04 2010
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:06:04 +0200
> From: Dominic Fandrey <kamikaze at bsdforen.de>
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: change file creation time on msdosfs
>
> I need to change the file creation time of some files on an
> msdosfs file system.
>
> Is there any other way to do this than copying the file and deleting
> the original?

There are _always_ alternative ways.  With suffficient knowledge, oue
could, for example, use 'dd' to copy the required two bytes to the
appropriate position on the raw device holding  the filesystem.
This approach is, however, not likely to be at all 'reasonable' for
the average user.

>               The usual suspects like touch and mv do not work.

yup.  'creation' timestamp is intended to be more-or-less immutable in
the Unix world.  And that 'viewpoint' carries over to  other kinds of
filesysems grafted onto a Unix host.

>From inside a 'custom' program, it's fairly readily doable, the system
calls to do it, to exist. but, off-hand, I can't think of anything that
makes it 'easy' for the average user to do it.



>
> Regards
>
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