# Why writing this post

It’s been some time using Arch Linux as my daily driver OS on a Thinkpad T14 (Intel) Gen 3. Also, as of now, luckily and amusingly, I’ve received a non-Macbook laptop then no need thinking a lot, just accidentally install it with Arch Linux 🤷.

The main reason is simple, I have been habitual of using Arch Linux as my personal daily driver and stored my config as a “dotfiles” repository. I was thinking my Arch setup goes profesional works right now lol.

# Revisit: personal daily driver at night time

By night, I use my personal driver mostly for reading, doom scrolling a few social media platforms, watch some youtube videos and a bit tinkering some stuff’s. However, it began as a playground machine or probably can be called “dotfiles” development.

Why is it called as “dotfiles” development? Because sometimes dealing with rolling release distro based is going wild, like accidentally upgrade the package without backup or something, where I put the configuration backup, How about magic tuning/tweak for Linux laptop, although it’s have different type hardware between personal and work driver, I believe on linux kernel upgrade ✌️.

The other story is that I want to write this post after completing setup (also with learning) how to auto detect HDMI/DP plug-ins and automatically adjust my monitor screen. Big thanks to udevd documentation at Arch Linux wiki. Well, will write it up somewhere someday 👀.

# TIL: How to know Linux installation age

Actually this is a nothing to do part, suddenly my brain asks how to know or how old this Arch Linux has been installed on laptop? This came when I read some blogs that talk about udevd setup in i3wm. Welp, let’s digging up.

Found some post at reddit r/archlinux discussing about *How old is your arch installation?. After reading through discussion, discovered there are a lot of ways to check it.

• From OP source, it ask to running

  $ awk -F "[[ ]" 'NR==1 {print $2;}' /var/log/pacman.log
  2023-05-02T15:24:25+0000]
  
  # convert to UTC +7 it will shown:
  # 2023-05-02T22:24:25+0700
  

  Some quick explanation was:
  • Those commands will filter for the first line from file /var/log/pacman.log.
  • Then the delimeter get the value inside bracket, if exist will print the 2nd field.
• Continue read the comment and discussions, found another way to check it with:

  # Using tune2fs
  $ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/nvme0n1p2 | grep "Filesystem created"
  Filesystem created:       Tue May  2 22:22:45 2023
  
  # Using dumpe2fs
  $ for dev in $(sudo fdisk -l | grep "^/dev" | awk '{print $1}'); do sudo dumpe2fs "$dev" &> /dev/null | grep 'created'; done
  Filesystem created:       Tue May  2 22:22:45 2023
  

  So i learn another CLI that i guess never type it with tune2fs and dumpe2fs. Actually those 2 commands is having use case usage but it had same feature to display details for each filesystem. It need pass parameter filesystem where its installed and filter out using grep command.

While so lazily writing this post due so busy, I found another post 8 Year Old Install Still Going Strong! , the OP wanted to highlight that Arch Linux is great for server usage (more precisely Teamspeak server) and provided the screenshot as proof. In that post there is a user that commented using stat command which is usually used to describe or get details some of file but also can read the / directory (poor me that stat also can read the directory).

$ stat / | grep Birth
Birth: 2023-05-02 22:22:46.000000000 +0700

# Closing thought

So after writing this, we know that your Linux can have a birthday 😂. Regarding about the output of those commands, its return date at May 2, 2023. However, the interesting part was the minutes and seconds (the hours were same at 10PM).

• Filesystem created: May 2, 2023 2 22:22:45
• Pacman log: May 2, 2023 2 22:24:25

The difference is approximately 1.67 minutes, so based on my thought, it’s related to the installation process steps, like creating the filesystem first (cleaning up disk and do formatting the filesystem) then followed by installing base kernel etc packages via pacman.

That’s all for my ramblings post and for “dotfiles”, can see it here: https://github.com/riskiwah/dot .

Thanks!.