User:Kim/Special Issue 27/Timekeeping device

tests

can be found on cerealbox timekeeping-device/

terminal

ping

to graph (graphic) visualizing length of seconds

traceroute

time (cmd)

build a timer in the terminal with bash using sleep and ring the bell after selected period

ideas

• server time
  • expand on cerealbox uptime, make more small api's and interfaces for them
  • not so much making a clock for cerealbox but more about exploring/ surfacing its (ways of passing, keeping) time
  • this is also on labour, questions of service, maintenance
  • in the room are also expectations: for services to run smoothly, total availability, fast (and direct) delivery
    • Mierle Laderman Ukeles' Maintenence Art
    • User:Kim/reading/In-depth: Time Consciousness and Discipline in the Industrial Revolution
    • Executing Micro-temporality
  • how do we interface with server (time) ?
• text as timekeeping device User:Sevgi
  • in what ways? (we use texts, rhymes, phrases to map time periods and rhythm – text can age – a log) ...
• get real time once: then make time depending on different parameters, latency of the server (slower/ faster)

references

• Lowtech Magazines Server stats
• Solar protocol Server stats over time

cereal time

general time data

$ timedatectl

outputs

Local time: Mon 2025-05-19 19:13:43 BST
Universal time: Mon 2025-05-19 18:13:43 UTC
RTC time: n/a
Time zone: Europe/London (BST, +0100)
System clock synchronized: yes
NTP service: active
RTC in local TZ: no

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running processes

$ ps (or $ ps aux)

outputs information on run processes (aux is more specific, shows user associated with each process, the start time, the memory consumption, the total running time, command associated with each process)
how many processes are running right now?

$ ps aux | wc -l

outputs a number (179). for a nicely formatted output do:

$ echo "User $USER has a total of $(ps -e | wc -l) processes running on $HOSTNAME."

to see realtime running processes and tasks do

$ htop (or $ top)

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last reboot

$ last reboot

outputs

reboot   system boot  6.6.47+rpt-rpi-v Tue May  6 09:24   still running
wtmp begins Wed Apr 23 09:46:29 2025

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load average (busyness) [1]

$ cat /proc/loadavg

will output

0.11 0.09 0.02 2/192 15046

This means: the first 3 entries are the load average we've seen with uptime and top. Then comes 2/192 which means 2 processes will run in the next switches and 192 processes are instantiated (most are sleeping.) Then, the last number, 15046, is the process identifier (pid) of the process that will run next.