Uptime
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Uptime is a measure of the time a computer system has been up and running. It came into use to describe the opposite of downtime, times when a system was non-operational.
It is often used a measure of computer operating system reliability and stability, in that this time represents the time a computer can be left unattended without crashing, or needing to be rebooted for administrative or maintenance purposes.
Amongst geeks uptime of a personal computer is sometimes displayed as a badge of honour on their email signature or web site. This was especially true in the Windows9x days, where Linux users would boast of uptimes of more than 30days, whereas many real-world Windows installations crashed most days. In more recent times very long uptimes for home users with unix machines are less striking because Windows XP crashes much less than its DOS-based predecessors.
Netcraft maintains the uptime records for many thousands of web hosting computers.
The appropriately-named uptime command will report a system's uptime on most Unix-based systems.
Windows systems need to type systeminfo at the command prompt to display all system information as well as the System Up Time.
External links
- Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com)
- Web sites with longest running systems by average uptime in the last 7 days (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html)
- The Uptimes Project (http://uptimes.hostingwired.com/)