Linux servers provide system administrators with a great deal of flexibility and information about the inner workings of the system. If you ever want to know about every minute detail of your hardware, Linux can do that. The same is also true of hardware.
For general files, the “stat” command is an excellent tool. If you are ever suspicious about a particular file listed on a website hosted by your server or just want to know technical details about it, “stat” can provide you with more information. To run stat, just enter the command followed by the file name:
stat whois-list
The output will look like this:
File: `whois-list'
Size: 6200 Blocks: 16 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 803h/2051d Inode: 6138752 Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--) Uid: ( 1000/ user) Gid: ( 1000/ user)
Access: 2010-05-30 21:04:39.000000000 -0400
Modify: 2010-02-01 12:35:24.000000000 -0500
Change: 2010-02-01 12:35:24.000000000 -0500
This provides a host of information all at once. You can also use it to list metadata about multiple files. For more information about “stat”, type “man stat” from the command line.
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