Is there any way to determine when a user account was first created?

sinister wrote:
> Is there any way to determine when a user account was first created?
>
>

a good guess might be the creation time of the home directory - although
this might be wrong if the directory was recreated during a restore from
a backup...

"Thomas Maier-Komor" <maierkom@lpr.e-technik.no-spam.tu-muenchen.de> wrote
in message news:cloa6i$j7h$1@wsc10.lrz-muenchen.de...
> sinister wrote:
>> Is there any way to determine when a user account was first created?
>
> a good guess might be the creation time of the home directory - although
> this might be wrong if the directory was recreated during a restore from
> a backup...

Right, I thought of that. Also, some of the users on my system have home
dirs that don't actually exist anymore. A sure sign they either never used
the account (and that the previous admin didn't create them properly), or
that the account is so old the directory structure changed a lot in the
meantime. But I was wondering if I could somehow get a precise date...

Thanks,

S

Thomas Maier-Komor wrote:
> sinister wrote:
>
>> Is there any way to determine when a user account was first
>> created?
>>
>
> a good guess might be the creation time of the home directory

How would you propose to find the creation time of the home directory
(or indeed of any file on a UFS filesystm)?

--
Tony

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:40:59 +0100, Tony Walton wrote:

> How would you propose to find the creation time of the home directory
> (or indeed of any file on a UFS filesystm)?

[duhring]$ ls -l .bash_profile
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 7 Aug 23 21:17 .bash_profile -> .bashrc
[duhring]$ ls -l /etc/chroot
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Aug 23 19:42 /etc/chroot -> ../usr/sbin/chroot

Tony Walton wrote:
> Thomas Maier-Komor wrote:
> > sinister wrote:
> >
> >> Is there any way to determine when a user account was first
> >> created?
> >>
> >
> > a good guess might be the creation time of the home directory
>
> How would you propose to find the creation time of the home directory
> (or indeed of any file on a UFS filesystm)?
>

well, I guess you are right that the creation time is not available,
but on the other hand i am not aware that the modification time
is updated for directories after their creation? Am I wrong?

Dave Uhring wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:40:59 +0100, Tony Walton wrote:
>
>
>>How would you propose to find the creation time of the home directory
>>(or indeed of any file on a UFS filesystm)?
>
>
> [duhring]$ ls -l .bash_profile
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 7 Aug 23 21:17 .bash_profile -> .bashrc
> [duhring]$ ls -l /etc/chroot
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Aug 23 19:42 /etc/chroot -> ../usr/sbin/chroot
>

Sorry Dave, I'm not with you there at all.

--
Tony

2004-10-27, 17:30(+02), Thomas Maier-Komor:
[...]
> well, I guess you are right that the creation time is not available,
> but on the other hand i am not aware that the modification time
> is updated for directories after their creation? Am I wrong?

The modification time is updated each time you modify the
directory (for instance when you link or unlink a file to it).

--
Stephane

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:24:51 +0100, Tony Walton wrote:

> Dave Uhring wrote:
>> On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:40:59 +0100, Tony Walton wrote:
>>
>>
>>>How would you propose to find the creation time of the home directory
>>>(or indeed of any file on a UFS filesystm)?
>>
>>
>> [duhring]$ ls -l .bash_profile
>> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 7 Aug 23 21:17 .bash_profile -> .bashrc
>> [duhring]$ ls -l /etc/chroot
>> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Aug 23 19:42 /etc/chroot -> ../usr/sbin/chroot
>>
>
> Sorry Dave, I'm not with you there at all.

The OS was installed at about 19:42 on 23 August - from the symlink for
/etc/chroot.

The user account was created at about 21:17 on the same day - from the
symlink in my user's home directory.

In article <cloev3$lfm$1@wsc10.lrz-muenchen.de>, Thomas Maier-Komor wrote:
> Tony Walton wrote:
>> Thomas Maier-Komor wrote:
>> > sinister wrote:
>> >
>> >> Is there any way to determine when a user account was first
>> >> created?
>> >>
>> >
>> > a good guess might be the creation time of the home directory
>>
>> How would you propose to find the creation time of the home directory
>> (or indeed of any file on a UFS filesystm)?
>>
>
> well, I guess you are right that the creation time is not available,
> but on the other hand i am not aware that the modification time
> is updated for directories after their creation? Am I wrong?

Yes:-)

ihg0(535)$ uname -a
SunOS xxxx 5.10 s10_58 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-5_10
ihg0(536)$ mkdir test;cd test;sleep 60
ihg0(537)$ ls -ld .;ls -ldc .
drwxr-xr-x 2 ccsqihg staff 512 Oct 27 16:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 2 ccsqihg staff 512 Oct 27 16:53 .
ihg0(538)$ touch zzz
ihg0(539)$ ls -ld .;ls -ldc .
drwxr-xr-x 2 ccsqihg staff 512 Oct 27 16:54 .
drwxr-xr-x 2 ccsqihg staff 512 Oct 27 16:54 .

--
Ian Gregory
http://www.zenatode.org.uk/ian/