CentOS - Aug 2010 - finding out the time of the second-to-last reboot

Hello all,

I've got a CentOS box that became non-responsive today for some obscure
reason and had to be rebooted. Is there a way to find out when it last had
to be rebooted before today? uptime gives you no history past the very last
reboot, so obviously I need to find some other way to get an answer to my
question.

Thanks for any and all tips.

Boris.
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On 8/9/2010 2:59 PM, Boris Epstein wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've got a CentOS box that became non-responsive today for some obscure
> reason and had to be rebooted. Is there a way to find out when it last
> had to be rebooted before today? uptime gives you no history past the
> very last reboot, so obviously I need to find some other way to get an
> answer to my question.
>
> Thanks for any and all tips.
'last' should give you a history of reboots and logins.  Also, an 
assortment of things that happen during bootup are logged to 
/var/log/messages.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Boris Epstein wrote:
> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> From: Boris Epstein <borepstein at gmail.com>
> Subject: [CentOS] finding out the time of the second-to-last reboot
> 
> Hello all,
>
> I've got a CentOS box that became non-responsive today for some obscure
> reason and had to be rebooted. Is there a way to find out when it last had
> to be rebooted before today? uptime gives you no history past the very last
> reboot, so obviously I need to find some other way to get an answer to my
> question.
>
> Thanks for any and all tips.
Try checking some of your log files, like apache, mysql, or 
/var/log/dmesg. That should tell you the last time the 
machine rebooted.

Kind Regards,

Keith Roberts

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On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, Boris Epstein wrote:
> Hello all,
> I've got a CentOS box that became non-responsive today for some 
> obscure reason and had to be rebooted. Is there a way to find out 
> when it last had to be rebooted before today? uptime gives you no 
> history past the very last reboot, so obviously I need to find some 
> other way to get an answer to my question.
The last utility will do it:

   # simple, but needs eye-parsing
   last reboot

   # exact, but fragile if wtmp isn't old enough
   last reboot | head -n2 | tail -n1

but only if /var/log/wtmp is old enough. If your system rotates wtmp, 
then you'll have to spelunk /var/log/messages*.

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> http://www.madboa.com/