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Unix for Advanced Users

7. Viewing System Information

7.2.1 How long has the system been up? uptime

The uptime command prints the current time, the length of time the machine has been up, and a rough estimate of the system load as expressed by three numbers.

The uptime command output looks like this:

2:58pm up 34 days, 20:20, 7 users, load average: 0.05, 0.12, 0.13

The load average numbers show the average number of processes active during the last minute, the last five minutes, and the last fifteen minutes. As you can see, this machine has been relaxing a bit.

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