ctime, atime, and mtime

It is important to distinguish between a file or directory's change time (ctime), access time (atime), and modify time (mtime).ctime -- In UNIX, it is not possible to tell the actual creation time of a file. The ctime--change time--is the time when changes were made to the file or directory's inode (owner, permissions, etc.). It is needed by the dump command to determine if the file needs to be