System Installation Date

The date a Linux box was first installed is difficult to obtain.
It's not registered anywhere, and system upgrades replace system files.

There are two ways to get this date.

The best one is to list all config files on the /etc directory, and select the oldest.

ls -lct /etc | tail -1 | awk '{print $6, $7, $8}'

That will output something like:

2008-11-05 21:15 adduser.conf

The other option, I know of, is if your system is RedHat, Centos, Fedora…
These systems generate a install.log file in the /root directory, so if nobody has deleted or modified it, this is also a good place to look at.

Original /etc idea

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