When was this Red Hat Linux system installed?

Have you ever inherited a server and needed to know when the operating system was installed and placed into service? 

I have encountered this situation before and here are a couple of ways to determine that information.

 

On Red Hat Linux we can use rpm:

rpm –qi basesystem

Another option for Red Hat Linux and Oracle Linux 6.5

ls –l /root/install.log only

and a third option is

ls –l /var/log/anaconda.* or ls –l /var/log/anaconda/anaconda.* for  Fedora Core on Schrodinger’s Cat release 19

All of these commands will produce log files or display output that will correspond to the date that the operating system was installed and should give the administrator a good starting point for understanding when the installation was performed.

 

Good luck with further detective work on the new inherited system.