Fastest way to get system uptime in Python in Linux

Question

I'm looking for a fast and lightweight way to read system uptime from a Python script. Is there a way to call the sysinfo Linux system call from Python?

So far I've found two other methods for measuring uptime, one that involves running an external processes and one that involves reading a file in /proc.

import subprocess  def uptime1():     raw = subprocess.check_output('uptime').decode("utf8").replace(',', '')     days = int(raw.split()[2])     if 'min' in raw:         hours = 0         minutes = int(raw[4])     else:         hours, minutes = map(int,raw.split()[4].split(':'))     totalsecs = ((days * 24 + hours) * 60 + minutes) * 60     return totalsecs  def uptime2():       with open('/proc/uptime', 'r') as f:         uptime_seconds = float(f.readline().split()[0])         return uptime_seconds 

When comparing the speed, the second method is around 50 times faster. Still, calling a system call directly should be yet another order of magnitude better.

>> import timeit >> print(timeit.timeit('ut.uptime1()', setup="import uptimecalls as ut", number=1000)) 1.7286969429987948 >> print(timeit.timeit('ut.uptime2()', setup="import uptimecalls as ut", number=1000)) 0.03355383600865025 

Answer 1

You can try installing psutil with:

pip install psutil 

and then use the following fragment of code:

import psutil import time   def seconds_elapsed():     return time.time() - psutil.boot_time()   print seconds_elapsed() 

Answer 2

This frankly seems like a much better solution:

def get_uptime():     with open('/proc/uptime', 'r') as f:         uptime_seconds = float(f.readline().split()[0])      return uptime_seconds 

It also has the added benefit of not requiring any additional modules.

Credits: Source