find installation date
 

can anyone tell me if there is a way to find the installation date?

i tried uname -a but it gives me the kernel date not the system install date.

Well this is not technical in any way but most systems make an install.log during setup usually in /root so just bring up your favorite xterm and type in:

cd /root
ls -l

and look at the date on the install.log

i couldnt find that file. but what i did do was login to root look in the root home directory an there is a file named
.cshrc I belive that's for another type of shell which i don't use and the date on it is Feb 15 2002

Could that be my install date?

It may be, go into you /etc directory and see if that date shows up a few times like maybe your /etc/shells file. Also do you have an idea of when the system was built that you could go from?

the date i stated is definitely not the install date.

I checked the Mandrake 9.0 iso cd i burnt and the VERSION file says:
Mandrake Linux 9.0 Dolphin-i586 20020923 15:18

which means Mandrake 9 was built 2002 09 23 so that's our starting date which we can go from.

i still have no idea when the system was installed.
You'd think there was a file which keeps that info?