DOWNTIMED(8)

💖 DOWNTIMED(8) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the System Manager's Manual section 8, and today we're talking about downtimed — the girl who literally never stops watching. she's in the 8 club so you already know she's a system-level queen 👑

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✨ NAME ✨

downtimed — system downtime monitoring and reporting daemon 🕰️💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

downtimed [-D] [-d datadir] [-F] [-f timefmt] [-l log] [-p pidfile] [-S]
[-s sleep]
downtimed -v

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so like. the downtimed daemon just vibes in the background, constantly updating a time stamp file on the disk. that's her whole job. lowkey iconic of her tbh.

and then — if the daemon gets killed with a signal associated with a normal system shutdown procedure, she records the shutdown time on the disk. like she's taking notes for you. 📝

when the daemon gets restarted during the next boot process, she reports how long the system was down and whether it was properly shut down or crashed (💀 messy). the downtime report gets output to the system log or to a specified log file. and also a record is appended to the downtime database. she keeps receipts, fr fr.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -D — Do not create nor update the downtime database. no database for you, she's just not feeling it today 🙈
• -d datadir — The directory where the time stamp files as well as the downtime database are located. The default directory is determined at compile time.
• -F — Do not call daemon(3) to fork(2) to background. Useful with modern system service managers such as systemd(8), launchd(8) and others. basically: let the service manager handle the forking, bestie, you don't need to do it yourself ✨
• -f timefmt — Specify the time and date format to use when reporting using strftime(3) syntax. The default is "%F %T".
• -l log — Logging destination. If the argument contains a slash (/) it is interpreted to be a path name to a log file, which will be created if it does not exist already. Otherwise it is interpreted as a syslog facility name. The default logging destination is "daemon" which means that the messages are written to syslog with the daemon facility code.
• -p pidfile — The location of the file which keeps track of the process ID of the running daemon process. The system default location is determined at compile time. May be disabled by specifying "none".
• -S — Normally fsync(2) is performed after each update of the time stamp. This option disables the fsync(2). It reduces the load on the disk system but makes the downtime measurement less reliable. ⚠️ trade-offs, bestie, they're real.
• -s sleep — Defines how long to sleep between each update of the on-disk time stamp file. More frequent updates result in more accurate downtime reporting in the case of a system crash. Less frequent updates decrease the amount of disk writes performed. The default is to sleep 15 seconds between each update. If you are using a flash memory based SSD or other disk which has limited amount of write cycles per block, it might be a good idea to set the sleep time to a higher value to prolong the lifetime of the storage device. 🫶 protect your SSD, she's been through enough
• -v — Display the program version number, copyright message and the default settings.

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✨ SIGNALS ✨

• SIGHUP — Close and re-open the output log. Use in case you want to rotate the log file. 🔄
• SIGTERM and SIGINT — Terminate gracefully. These signals signify that a graceful system shutdown is in process.

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✨ EXIT STATUS ✨

The daemon exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

downtimes(1), syslog.conf(5), https://dist.epipe.com/downtimed/

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✨ BUGS ✨

• The reporting accuracy in case of a system crash depends on how often the time stamp is updated.
• Finding out the system startup time is very operating system specific. If the program does not have specific code to support your operating system, it assumes that the system started when the daemon started. 😭
• Reporting is inaccurate if the system clock changes during system downtime or startup process. Daylight saving time changes have no effect as all calculations are done using UTC. (UTC stays unbothered. UTC doesn't do drama. 🧚)

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✨ COPYRIGHT ✨

Copyright © 2009-2016 Janne Snabb. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

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and that's the whole page bestie!! version 1.0, dated 2016-05-24 — a classic, an icon, a legend, no notes 💅✨ go forth and monitor your downtime, she's rooting for you 🫶💖