Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi.. Is there any way to find out when the OS was installed for a system? How can we find that out?

My system is :

IBM AIX 4.3.3 RS6000

Thanks, ST2000

Don't know of any way to find that out - especially if it's a system that has been around awhile.

You can look at the dates of the files in / specifically the directories. Some have to be created when the system is built and will have the same date as others. This would give you your 'best guess'. Files installed during installation usually come from a tar file and have the creation date of when the file was made orginally, but that was when the developer at IBM made it, not when it was created on your system.

Try the ls command with appropriate options (-calt should do it) and check out the date of the directories at the bottom of the list (lost+found would be a good one )

% ls -calt /

total 599
dr-xr-xr-x 75 root root 262336 Sep 4 14:44 proc
drwxr-xr-x 27 root root 1024 Sep 4 14:41 .
drwxr-xr-x 27 root root 1024 Sep 4 14:41 ..
drwxr-xr-x 32 root sys 3584 Aug 23 13:35 etc
drwx------ 5 root root 512 Aug 14 14:46 root
drwxrwxr-x 25 root sys 512 Jul 26 09:28 var
drwxrwxr-x 13 root sys 512 Apr 18 21:52 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 6 root root 512 Apr 18 21:24 vol
drwxrwxr-x 18 root sys 3584 Apr 18 21:24 dev
-rw------- 1 root root 1028 Apr 18 21:24 .cpr_config
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1 Apr 18 21:24 adm
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 3 Apr 18 21:24 home
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1 Apr 18 21:24 net
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1 Apr 18 21:24 rpkgs
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2 Apr 18 21:24 u
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1 Apr 18 21:24 xfn
drwxr-xr-x 9 root sys 512 Apr 18 21:14 kernel
drwxrwxr-x 6 root sys 512 Dec 20 2001 export
drwxrwxr-x 35 root sys 1024 Jun 12 2001 usr
drwxr-xr-x 3 root other 512 Mar 7 2000 system
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root other 11 Feb 23 2000 nsr -> /export/nsr
drwxr-xr-x 3 root nobody 512 Dec 28 1999 cdrom
dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 512 Dec 17 1999 stash
lrwxrwxrwx 1 sybase dba 18 Nov 16 1999 sybasedata -> /export/sybasedata
drwxrwxr-x 4 root sys 1024 Nov 8 1999 sbin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Nov 3 1999 tmp -> /var/tmp
drwxrwxrwt 2 sys sys 512 Nov 3 1999 tmp.original
-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 12 Nov 3 1999 .new
drwxrwxr-x 4 root sys 512 Nov 3 1999 devices
drwxr-xr-x 16 root sys 1024 Nov 3 1999 platform
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Nov 3 1999 bin -> ./usr/bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Nov 3 1999 lib -> ./usr/lib
drwxrwxr-x 2 root sys 512 Nov 3 1999 mnt
drwx------ 2 root root 8192 Nov 3 1999 lost+found

Yap.. Thats what I did.. This was the only way I could think of, before writing the same here..

My oldest files come to June 21st, 2001 which is about 465 days as of August 28th, 2002 (A week before)
Reason why I was curious or needed this, is that my trace files in oracle shows a timestamp of 4269058845 which is measured in milliseconds. So, when I decode the same it comes to 494 days, unless system is loaded with OS and then later on loaded with something else... Coz, Oracle is installed Nov 6th, 2001, but some oracle files are there from Jul..

All in all, I am missing about 30 days to my calculation...

Thanks, ST2000

I have also wondered this. I have found a good way.

1) Look for lost+found directories. These are created when the directories are made.

2) Also, you can look at the DISK device list for your root volume in /dev/dsk. The date will be when it was created.

There are many ways to look for this, but these are just a few.