Arch Linux

KenJackson

Member

From: Maryland, USA

Registered: 2011-05-31

Posts: 18

cron_uptime: A script to log the longest uptimes, run by cron

The "What's Your Uptime?" thread inspired me to share this script.  It keeps track of my uptime every day, deleting yesterday's entry unless today's is smaller.  That way I get a log of longest uptimes.

#!/bin/sh
# This should be called from cron once per day to log uptime
# Log format: 'MM/DD/YY up XX days'

LOG=$HOME/text/uptimelog.txt
DAYS=0
uptime|grep -q days  &&  DAYS="$(uptime|sed 's/.*up \([0-9]*\) days.*/\1/')"
    
# Delete the last line from the log unless we've rebooted

if [ -s $LOG ]; then
    LAST="$(tail -n1 $LOG | sed 's/^.*up *\([0-9]*\) *days.*$/\1/')"
    if [ -n "$LAST" ]  &&  [[ $DAYS -ge $LAST ]]; then
        sed -i '$ d' $LOG
    fi
fi

# Log the current uptime

printf "$(date +%D)  up %2d days\n" $DAYS >> $LOG

I save this as ~/bin/cron_uptime and run it with this crontab entry:

4   4  * * *  $HOME/bin/cron_uptime

It's also here.

In the past three years, I've recorded one 50-day uptime, two in the 40s and three in the 30s.  That was my Fedora system.   I just now set it up on my Arch system.  These numbers are actually artificially low because I feel compelled to reboot every time a kernel is released--which seems to happen fairly often.