Uptime and who -b are showing different times when the system was last booted on Linux
Solution 1
[I caught some misconceptions here which I think will this post clear off eventually]
There should not be any difference since both refer to /var/run/utmp
file, which has its own format to store the records. If at all there is any difference, then your utmp file is busted. uptime shows the amount of time that has passed since the system has been booted or how long the system has been running. It does not tell you the system clock or system boot time . System boot time information is stored /var/run/wtmp
file.
[centos@centos temp]$ date; uptime; who -b
Fri Dec 9 20:41:40 IST 2011
20:41:40 up 1:32, 2 users, load average: 0.50, 0.37, 0.29
system boot 2011-12-09 19:11
uptime refers as well /proc/uptime, which essentially keeps the counters in kernel.
[centos@centos temp]$ sleep 1; cat /proc/uptime; uptime; sleep 5; cat /proc/uptime ; uptime
5914.79 5271.83
20:47:39 up 1:38, 2 users, load average: 0.29, 0.31, 0.27
5920.07 5276.80
20:47:44 up 1:38, 2 users, load average: 0.56, 0.36, 0.29
/var/run/wtmp
is referred by last/lastb commands. who
& w
refers /var/run/utmp
file. last reboot
will show a log of all reboots since the log file was created.
Additionally, if you are having /proc filesystem, then tool such as procinfo
can give you bootup time as well.
Example:
bash$ procinfo | grep Bootup
Bootup: Wed Mar 21 15:15:50 2001 Load average: 0.04 0.21 0.34 3/47 6829
Solution 2
I've seen this happen when the BIOS clock is out of sync. You can verify that by running:
$ hwclock --show
Tue 30 Aug 2011 12:48:52 PM PDT -1.000516 seconds
If this is off you should sync it back up (using the --set option). If you notice this happening frequently you probably need to change the CR2032 on your motherboard http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/81
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setatakahashi
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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setatakahashi almost 2 years
I have a Linux system where it is showing to me two different times when the system was last booted.
root@linux:~ # who -b; uptime system boot 2009-07-09 20:51 11:48am up 1 day 0:54, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.03, 0.00
I presume that who is showing the content of /var/log/wtmp and uptime I have no idea.
Is there some way to fix this difference? I rebooted the system yesterday so I know the contents that uptime is showing me is correct.
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Admin almost 13 yearsIs the date of the system rightly set? If you boot again and go to the bios, is the date right?
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Admin almost 13 yearswhen you reboot again, does
who -b
still show the same date (2009-07-09 20:51
) or does it change ? The manpage of mywho
suggests that it is using/var/run/utmp
if no file is specified. Are the write permissions for this file reasonable (userroot
and grouputmp
on my system) ? Is/var
full ? -
Admin almost 13 years
uptime
reads/proc/uptime
.who
reads/var/run/utmp
, which doesn't seem to be updated correctly. What distribution are you using? -
Admin almost 13 yearsEverything seems okay on my end (sorry, I forgot which host I had this issue but I found it) root@linux:~ # date Mon Aug 15 12:30:33 BRT 2011 root@linux:~ # ls -l /var/run/utmp -rw-rw-r-- 1 root tty 4992 2011-08-15 12:29 /var/run/utmp root@linux:~ # cat /etc/*release SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (i586) VERSION = 10 PATCHLEVEL = 1
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setatakahashi almost 13 yearsNo, my server is showing the correct hardware time. My guess is that there is a file that is read-only and is not being updated. But thanks for your suggestion.
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Rfraile about 6 yearsThe same happens with Tuptime, it register the bootup time at startup, but maybe later, if the system have some time drift, the uptime value changed. The root cause usually is because these tools look for the btime value in /proc/stat and this change with the drifts. It is easy to show if this happend looking into the value reported in the line
INFO:Drift over btime
when the program is executed in verbose modetuptime -v