Get information about the creation date of your root filesystem on Linux
The Linux stat(1) utility will print information about your root filesystem. The Birth entry shows when the filesystem was created. This was the start of the Arch Linux installation procedure.
┌──[jason@11000000.10101000.00000001.00000011]─[~/Desktop] └──╼ ╼ $ stat / File: / Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory Device: 8,3 Inode: 2 Links: 17 Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root) Access: 2021-11-28 17:24:59.677610100 +1100 Modify: 2021-11-26 22:13:50.072750646 +1100 Change: 2021-11-26 22:13:50.072750646 +1100 Birth: 2021-11-26 22:04:40.000000000 +1100 |
Get just the birth date of the filesystem like this. This could be very useful if you wish to know when a certain partition was created.
┌──[jason@11000000.10101000.00000001.00000011]─[~/Desktop] └──╼ ╼ $ stat / | grep "Birth" | sed 's/Birth: //g' | cut -b 2-11 2021-11-26 |
This version will show the entries and just the date and time.
┌──[jason@11000000.10101000.00000001.00000011]─[/mnt/windows/backups/homer] └──╼ ╼ $ stat / | grep [A-Z] | sed 's/ Birth: /Birth: /g' | cut -b 1-24 File: / Size: 4096 Block Device: 8,3 Inode: 2 Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x Access: 2021-11-28 17:24 Modify: 2021-11-26 22:13 Change: 2021-11-26 22:13 Birth: 2021-11-26 22:04 |
So, a very useful command indeed.
This is another method. This will get the date and time the filesystem was created.
[root@darkstar homer]# tune2fs -l /dev/sda3 | grep 'Filesystem created:' Filesystem created: Fri Nov 26 22:04:40 2021 |
That is also a very useful command.
This is a way to find out which device the / partition is on.
[root@darkstar homer]# mount | grep "on / type" /dev/sda3 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime) |
Or even this way. Both work fine.
[root@darkstar homer]# dumpe2fs $(mount | grep 'on \/ ' | awk '{print $1}') | grep 'Filesystem created:' dumpe2fs 1.46.4 (18-Aug-2021) Filesystem created: Fri Nov 26 22:04:40 2021 |
This is how to print the uptime of your Linux system in minutes. This is the value in seconds divided by 60.
┌──[jason@11000000.10101000.00000001.00000011]─[/mnt/windows/backups/homer] └──╼ ╼ $ awk '{print int($1+0.5)/60}' /proc/uptime |
The example below shows the rounded number of seconds the machine has been up.
┌──[jason@11000000.10101000.00000001.00000011]─[/mnt/windows/backups/homer] └──╼ ╼ $ awk '{print int($1+0.5)}' /proc/uptime 12345 |
All in all, these are very useful tips. Could be useful in bash scripts.