Check if computer went off by crash or shutdown in Ubuntu 14.04

Question

I would like to check if my computer with Ubuntu 14.04 was actively shutdown, or whether it crashed. I come into the office in the morning and my computer is off while it should have been on. This has happened a number of consecutive days, and I can check the computer goes off around the same time each night. So I want to know if my computer crashed or whether somebody shut it off. Is there a way to get this information from the logs?

Here are a few post: How do I check if last shutdown was clean? Where is the shutdown log? — Remus Rigo, Oct 21 '15 at 08:00
Thanks. I got what I needed from the logs and last -x command. It seems my computer is crashing at night. — Niels Janssen, Oct 21 '15 at 08:40

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 21 '15 at 08:00

2

Find in /var/log a dmesg issue, command last to see the exact reboot time. You will see a line starting with reboot (or may be shutdown) for all reboot/crash. cat /var/log/messages from a terminal and check for messages at the time stamp of reboot or just before it. dmesg can give the last boot time messages.

answered Oct 21 '15 at 08:00

Jack Fosters

145

The last command is 'last reboot', which uses a special user 'reboot' for this command. – crafter Jun 16 '17 at 10:20

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 14 '16 at 14:48

Issue the command

grep rsyslogd /var/log/syslog

or for less noise

grep -E 'rsyslogd.*(exit|start)'

If you see matched pairs of (blah blah)exit(blah blah) followed by (blah blah)start lines the system shutdown (at least somewhat) cleanly. If you have two (blah blah)start lines in a row the system did not shutdown cleanly.

Check if computer went off by crash or shutdown in Ubuntu 14.04

2 Answers2