I'm guessing this issue is kernel-based, so chose this forum.

Up until recent kernel releases, the time of day was given in human-readable format in the logged messages during the boot process. For the last few upgrades, time has been given in "epoch" format, for example (from my dmesg):

Is there any way, short of recompiling the kernel, which is beyond my level of skill, to make the messages display readable time again? I have many times wanted to know when a certain event took place, mainly for troubleshooting. Now, though I suppose I could find a utility to convert epoch time to our normal system, it's no longer possible to glance at a line and see when this or that happened.

I posted on Ubuntu forums about this but never got an answer.

Thanks!

In kernel configuration the only thing you choose is if you want timing information on printks...you can't choose the format!