So I think  I have to disagree about what it means in v7, comments notwithstanding.

iupdat() has:

                if(ip->i_flag&ICHG)
                        dp->di_ctime = time;

ICHG is set in unlink(), chmod(), chown() and utime() (maybe a few others, this was a quick peek).

So even in v7, ctime means any changes to metadata / inode data. At least for some definition of "any".

Btw, it looks like this was named IUPD in v6 and did similar things. In v6 it is updated in iput when IUPD is set. But it looks like ctime and mtime are folded together. So v7 is the first edition that has ctime and the code implements any change to metadata from my reading.

Warner

On Tue, Mar 11, 2025 at 8:19 PM Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:

As part of a discusion on the Linux kernel mailing list, there was an
assertion that ctime was orginally "creation time".

From the v7 sources in TUHS, we can see:

struct dinode
{
        unsigned short  di_mode;        /* mode and type of file */
        short   di_nlink;       /* number of links to file */
        short   di_uid;         /* owner's user id */
        short   di_gid;         /* owner's group id */
        off_t   di_size;        /* number of bytes in file */
        char    di_addr[40];    /* disk block addresses */
        time_t  di_atime;       /* time last accessed */
        time_t  di_mtime;       /* time last modified */
        time_t  di_ctime;       /* time created */
};

... although the v7 kernel sources does seem to update ctime when the
inode metadata changes, regardless of what the coment in
/usr/src/sys/h/ino.h might say.

More interestingly, this comment seems to continue in newer versions
up to 3BSD, and then the comments becomes "change time" in BSD 4.2,
probably coincident with the File System Implementation?

The best we can guess is that the change from "creation time" to
"inode change time" happened sometime between 1979 and 1982.  Does
anyone who was around can give the story about how and when this
happened?

                                        - Ted