checking installation time of a software

s2sum2b · 12-13-2010, 06:07 AM

Hi everyone,
I have installed thunderbird sometime back on Ubuntu.
I want to know the date and time of installation.
How can i get this information.
I tried "stat thunderbird", but it did not give the installation time
Any help will be appreciated.

colucix · 12-13-2010, 06:32 AM

Hi and welcome to LinuxQuestions! Sincerely I don't know if there is some option of dpkg to retrieve the installation date, but you can try to look at /var/log/dpkg.log.

knudfl · 12-13-2010, 06:49 AM

The command for a list with an install date for all packages :

ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/info | grep list > list-packages.txt
( An alphabetic list.)

A list in install order (the last installed package in line 1)
ls -tl /var/lib/dpkg/info | grep list > last-packages.txt

EDIT : typo edited.
..

s2sum2b · 12-13-2010, 10:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by knudfl

The command for a list with an install date for all packages :

ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/lib/info | grep list > list-packages.txt
( An alphabetic list.)

A list in install order (the last installed package in line 1)
ls -tl /var/lib/dpkg/lib/info | grep list > last-packages.txt

..

thanks for the reply

There is no directory called /var/lib/dpkg/lib in my system. But there is file called /var/lib/dpkg/info, which has
the following information.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15K 2010-12-11 11:28 thunderbird.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 925 2010-12-11 11:28 thunderbird-locale-en-gb.list

Here the date shown is 11 december, which probably the date, when last update of thunderbird happened.
Coz, I am pretty sure that the first installation took place at least a month ago, and which is what i want.

knudfl · 12-14-2010, 01:50 AM

Sorry for the typo ....

ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/info | grep thunderbird

... and you will see, that 'info' only saves the latest install / update.

If you want backups of install times :
I guess you will have to run this frequently ( and save the files )
ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/info > installed`date '+%Y-%m-%d'`.txt

EDIT : Please see post #6. (I totally forgot /var/log/dpkg.log )
..

colucix · 12-14-2010, 02:25 AM

In alternative:

Code:

zgrep installed /var/log/dpkg.log* | grep thunderbird

s2sum2b · 12-14-2010, 06:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colucix

In alternative:

Code:

zgrep installed /var/log/dpkg.log* | grep thunderbird

this worked.
Thanks a lot colucix and also knudfl