Time it takes a command to run

[Eddiefdz]

Hello,

Can you guys tell me of an easy way of telling how long it took a program to run. For example, i have cron job that runs a script that I run every night to do backups. I want to know how long it takes the backups to finish. So what is the best way to go about doing this?

Thanks,

Eddie Fernandez
CCNA, Network+, A+, MCP

 

[KenCunningham]

Why not take the time you start your cron job from the time your log ends as in ls -ltr <logfile> (assuming you have a log)? Voila - the total time for the backup.

 

[KenCunningham]

Alternatively , truss might suit your needs?

 

[ericbrunson]

Since it's a script, you could just put a 'date' at the beginning and the end, that will tell you when it started and stopped. Alternatively, if there is a single command that runs the backups in the script, put 'time' in front of it.

ns1(~)$ time sleep 5

real    0m5.009s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.002s

real is wall clock time, user and sys tell the time the process spent doing work in use and kernel space, respectively.

 

[marsd]

man 2 times or man 1 time.