Administration – How to See Computer’s Uptime and History

administration

I was wondering if it is at all possible to find out when the computer was switched on, what files where accessed what folders were opened, what programs run and when the computer was resumed and put back to sleep (just like in the movies).

I know this isn't that important but it would be cool to know.

Best Answer

When was the machine turned on:

uptime

Example from my notebook:

20:06:33 up  1:50,  2 users,  load average: 0.03, 0.04, 0.05

That is current time, uptime, amount of users and the load average.

What programs run:

Command line
```
ps -ef|more
```
GUI - System monitor (dash, system monitor):

When the computer was resumed or sleep

last

enter image description here

what folders were opened

what files where accessed

None of these I know a command for. Natty has activity journal for files.

Other interesting things...

To see when the users logged in the last time: lastlog.
Login failure: faillog.

last, lastlog, faillog make use of log file /var/log/wtmp (last), /var/log/lastlog and /var/log/faillog. If those are not active you will not get any result.
lsof shows a list of currently open files.

It can do alot of checks on a lot of options. From man lsof:
To list all open IPv4 network files in use by the process whose PID is 1234, use:
```
lsof -i 4 -a -p 1234
```
To list all open files for login name ``abe'', or user ID 1234, or process 456, or process 123, or process 789, use:
```
lsof -p 456,123,789 -u 1234,abe
```
To list all open files on device /dev/hd4, use:
```
lsof /dev/hd4
```

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Downloading and Installing Latest Version of KILE

According to the source page for kile, 11.04 shipped with 1:2.1.0~svn1112278beta4-2ubuntu2, and 1:2.1.0~svn2010122beta5-1ubuntu1~natty1 is available as a backport.

11.10 already appears to have 2.1.0 final.

This fellow appears to have a PPA of Kile 2.1 so that you don't have to compile it yourself:

https://launchpad.net/~kile/+archive/stable

You can find information on how to add and use PPAs here:

What are PPAs and how do I use them?
Are PPA's safe to add to my system and what are some "red flags" to watch out for? (And of course the usual warning about using untrusted packages)

Here's a command line snippet on how to use it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kile/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Will upgrade your kile to that version (2.1). Ubuntu automatically disables PPAs the next time you upgrade your OS and usually you'll just pick up the newest version that is available at that time.

NTP – NTPD vs NTPDate: Pros and Cons

ntpdate is deprecated as of September 2012; apparently ntpd now has the ability to do one-time updates if needed, and ntpdate is based on "long-neglected" ntpd code. (News to me, since my system has ntpdate but not ntpd! I'll be fixing that presently; thanks for asking this question.)

As for the difference between continuous versus periodic updates, I think the trade-offs there are what you would expect; continuous adjustments maintain better accuracy over time, which can be important for databases and MailDir (see same link). But of course this would require slightly more network traffic (presumably negligible for exchanging simple timestamps) as well as an always-online network connection, slight consumption of RAM and CPU, etc. But all these downsides are tiny in a modern computing environment; overall I doubt there are good reasons to substitute cron for ntpd.