Date of a FreeBSD installation

[Carl Johnson]

Chip Camden <sterling at camdensoftware.com> writes:

> Quoth Carl Johnson on Thursday, 13 January 2011:
>> Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> writes:
>> 
>> > On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:50:27 -0800, Chuck Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote:
>> >> On Jan 13, 2011, at 1:46 PM, Devin Teske wrote:
>> >> > This is nearly always accurate on any FreeBSD system (when wanting to
>> >> > query the date the machine was built):
>> >> > 
>> >> > 	ls -l /etc/defaults/rc.conf
>> >> 
>> >> I gather that you don't ever run mergemaster, which would update this file?
>> >> My machine installed in 2001 has a Dec 2010 date for that file:
>> >> 
>> >> -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  36037 Dec  1 14:13 /etc/defaults/rc.conf
>> >
>> > Exactly that was my thought. Maybe a file that is NOT subject
>> > to one of the system upgrade procedures would be better? Maybe
>> > something in /boot?
>> >
>> > % ls -l /etc/defaults/rc.conf
>> > -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  34300 Aug 24  2008 /etc/defaults/rc.conf
>> > % ls -l /boot/defaults/loader.conf
>> > -r--r--r--  1 root  wheel  19426 Aug 24  2008 /boot/defaults/loader.conf
>> >
>> > No, forget about that, also nonsense, looks to new...
>> 
>> How about /var/empty:
>> 
>> % ls -ldo /var/empty/
>> dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  schg 512 Jul 18 19:16 /var/empty/
>> 
>> It can be changed, but doesn't look likely.
>
> On my system, it gives a date several months in advance of my install
> date (Nov 21 2009).

Oops, you're right.  I just checked and it is a few days before I
actually installed mine, so that is probably when the ISO was built.

-- 
Carl Johnson		carlj at peak.org