How To Use Uptime Command on Linux

The main goal of the Uptime team is to show how long the system has been running. Also, this command will display the time for you, the number of registered users as well as the average load of your system.

Using Uptime

The syntax for this command is as follows:

uptime [OPTIONS]

To display the operating time of your system, call the command without any additional operations:

uptime

The output will look something like this:

17:41:04 up 7 min,  6 user,  load average: 0.66, 0.62, 0.72
  • 17:41:04 – current system time
  • up 7 min – this is the time during which the system worked.
  • 6 user number of registered users.
  • load average: 0.66, 0.62, 0.72– average system load values ​​for the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.

The average load on Linux can be a little confusing. Unlike other operating systems that show average CPU utilization, Linux shows average system utilization.

Uptime command options

This command accepts only a few options, which is rarely used. The -p, –pretty option tells uptime to display output in a nice format:

uptime -p

The output will only show how long the system has been running:

up 8 minutes

The -s, –since option shows the date and time since the system started:

uptime -s
2020-05-04 10:32:11

The other two options are:

-h, –help- Show help and exit

-V, –version- Displays version information and output.

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