I was just reading up on the Birth section of stat and it appears ext4 should support it, but even a file I just created leaves it empty.  ~  % touch test                                                       slave-iv ~  % stat test.pl                                                     slave-iv  File: test.pl  Size: 173             Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular fileDevice: 903h/2307d      Inode: 41943086    Links: 1Access: (0600/-rw-------)  Uid: ( 1000/xenoterracide)   Gid: (  100/   users)Access: 2012-09-22 18:22:16.924634497 -0500Modify: 2012-09-22 18:22:16.924634497 -0500Change: 2012-09-22 18:22:16.947967935 -0500 Birth: - ~  % sudo tune2fs -l /dev/md3 | psp4                                  slave-ivtune2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)Filesystem volume name:   homeLast mounted on:          /homeFilesystem UUID:          ab2e39fb-acdd-416a-9e10-b501498056deFilesystem magic number:  0xEF53Filesystem revision #:    1 (dynamic)Filesystem features:      has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype needs_recovery extent flex_bg sparse_super large_file huge_file uninit_bg dir_nlink extra_isizeFilesystem flags:         signed_directory_hash Default mount options:    journal_dataFilesystem state:         cleanErrors behavior:          ContinueFilesystem OS type:       LinuxInode count:              59736064Block count:              238920960Reserved block count:     11946048Free blocks:              34486248Free inodes:              59610013First block:              0Block size:               4096Fragment size:            4096Reserved GDT blocks:      967Blocks per group:         32768Fragments per group:      32768Inodes per group:         8192Inode blocks per group:   512RAID stride:              128RAID stripe width:        256Flex block group size:    16Filesystem created:       Mon May 31 20:36:30 2010Last mount time:          Sat Oct  6 11:01:01 2012Last write time:          Sat Oct  6 11:01:01 2012Mount count:              14Maximum mount count:      34Last checked:             Tue Jul 10 08:26:37 2012Check interval:           15552000 (6 months)Next check after:         Sun Jan  6 07:26:37 2013Lifetime writes:          7255 GBReserved blocks uid:      0 (user root)Reserved blocks gid:      0 (group root)First inode:              11Inode size:           256Required extra isize:     28Desired extra isize:      28Journal inode:            8First orphan inode:       55313243Default directory hash:   half_md4Directory Hash Seed:      442c66e8-8b67-4a8c-92a6-2e2d0c220044Journal backup:           inode blocksWhy doesn't my ext4 partition populate this field?
Birth is empty on ext4
filesystems;ext4;stat
The field gets populated (see below) only coreutils stat does not display it. Apparently they're waiting1 for the xstat() interface.coreutils patches - aug. 2012 - TODOstat(1) and ls(1) support for birth time. Dependent on xstat() being  provided by the kernelYou can get the creation time via debugfs:debugfs -R 'stat <inode_number>' DEVICEe.g. for my /etc/profile which is on /dev/sda2 (see How to find out what device a file is on):stat -c %i /etc/profile398264debugfs -R 'stat <398264>' /dev/sda2debugfs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)Inode: 398264   Type: regular    Mode:  0644   Flags: 0x80000Generation: 2058737571    Version: 0x00000000:00000001User:     0   Group:     0   Size: 562File ACL: 0    Directory ACL: 0Links: 1   Blockcount: 8Fragment:  Address: 0    Number: 0    Size: 0 ctime: 0x506b860b:19fa3c34 -- Wed Oct  3 02:25:47 2012 atime: 0x50476677:dcd84978 -- Wed Sep  5 16:49:27 2012 mtime: 0x506b860b:19fa3c34 -- Wed Oct  3 02:25:47 2012crtime: 0x50476677:dcd84978 -- Wed Sep  5 16:49:27 2012Size of extra inode fields: 28EXTENTS:(0):33087741 Linus' reply on LKML thread