FAT32 File Creation/Birth Time Reporting Finally Comes To Linux

Finally for FAT file-systems with the in-development Linux 5.19 kernel is support via the statx() system call for reporting a file's birth/creation time.

In continuation of the article earlier this month about Linux FAT file creation/birth time reporting, that code by way of Andew Morton's branch has been successfully mainlined into the kernel as of yesterday.

As explained in the earlier article, since Linux 4.11 in 2017 there has been the statx system call with enhanced file information reporting that can be used for standardizing the exposing of file creation/birth times and other information not otherwise exposed via the traditional stat system call. The statx system call for these "extended attributes" has been added to Glibc and various extended bits of information exposed by the various Linux file-systems.

This pull has the changes for reporting the creation time in statx on FAT16/FAT32 file-systems. The FAT Linux driver has reported a creation time "ctime" previously but set as the change time for a file too.