The date of an Ubuntu installaton

[bcostacurta]

Hello,

is there a way to see at which date was an ubuntu installation made ?
Whatever the system is regularly updated and/or migrated to new version.
Thanks.

Regards,
Bruno

[D-cat]

If you run ls -l /boot/grub , the dates of the various files will give you clues, like default.map will likely be the date of your first install, and menu.lst may be the date of your last kernel upgrade. It's not a given, but like I said, might give you clues.

You can also look at /var/log/messages (this file can get b-i-g, or have several rotated archive versions (messages.n.gz) depending on your setup, the largest number will be the oldest) for a more accurate log of all major system events and errors.

The various logs in /var/log/installer may be of most use to you.

That can be a lot to look through, but if you need exact dates and times, that's where you'll find them.

[bcostacurta]

Thanks for info.

Indeed places like /var/log/installer and /boot/grub contain dated files created during Ubuntu installation and (at least apparently) not updated or stamped during update or migrations to new releases.

A lot of my friends using Windows reinstall their system on regurlarly periods, ie. once per year because of degrading performances, poor system cleanup ..etc.. and I always like to mention to them that my Linux performs perfectly even being installed few years ago and kept up-to-date with latest releases.

Note: /var/log also seems to also contain files stamped during installation but maybe operations like rotate and logs cleaning might clean them ?

Bye,
Bruno