uptime - find out how long the Unix system has been up

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uptime is one of the basic Unix commands which allows you to quickly confirm how long your Unix system has been up and running since it was last rebooted or powered on.

This is how you use it:

bash-2.05b$ uptime
 11:18:23  up 83 days, 18:29,  4 users,  load average: 0.16, 0.03, 0.01

uptime command output explained

This single line of output gives you all the uptime information you may need:

11:18:23 - that's the current Unix system time
up 83 days, 18:29 - shows for how long your system has been running
4 users - number of users currently logged into your Unix system
load average: 0.16, 0.03, 0.01 - the average CPU load (average number of jobs in your system's run queue)for the 1, 5 and 15 minutes

See also:

- Basic Unix commands