How do I convert dmesg timestamp to custom date format?

Question

I am trying to understand the dmesg timestamp and find it hard to convert that to change it to java date/custom date format.

Sample dmesg log:

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Answer 1

So KevZero requested a less kludgy solution, so I came up with the following:

sed -r 's#^\[([0-9]+\.[0-9]+)\](.*)#echo -n "[";echo -n $(date --date="@$(echo "$(grep btime /proc/stat|cut -d " " -f 2)+\1" | bc)" +"%c");echo -n "]";echo -n "\2"#e'

Here's an example:

$ dmesg|tail | sed -r 's#^\[([0-9]+\.[0-9]+)\](.*)#echo -n "[";echo -n $(date --date="@$(echo "$(grep btime /proc/stat|cut -d " " -f 2)+\1" | bc)" +"%c");echo -n "]";echo -n "\2"#e'
[2015-12-09T04:29:20 COT] cfg80211:   (57240000 KHz - 63720000 KHz @ 2160000 KHz), (N/A, 0 mBm), (N/A)
[2015-12-09T04:29:23 COT] wlp3s0: authenticate with dc:9f:db:92:d3:07
[2015-12-09T04:29:23 COT] wlp3s0: send auth to dc:9f:db:92:d3:07 (try 1/3)
[2015-12-09T04:29:23 COT] wlp3s0: authenticated
[2015-12-09T04:29:23 COT] wlp3s0: associate with dc:9f:db:92:d3:07 (try 1/3)
[2015-12-09T04:29:23 COT] wlp3s0: RX AssocResp from dc:9f:db:92:d3:07 (capab=0x431 status=0 aid=6)
[2015-12-09T04:29:23 COT] wlp3s0: associated
[2015-12-09T04:29:56 COT] thinkpad_acpi: EC reports that Thermal Table has changed
[2015-12-09T04:29:59 COT] i915 0000:00:02.0: BAR 6: [??? 0x00000000 flags 0x2] has bogus alignment
[2015-12-09T05:00:52 COT] thinkpad_acpi: EC reports that Thermal Table has changed

If you want it to perform a bit better, put the timestamp from proc into a variable instead :)

Answer 2

In recent versions of dmesg, you can just call dmesg -T.

Answer 3

If you don't have the -T option for dmesg as for example on Andoid, you can use the busybox version. The following solves also some other issues:

1. The [0.0000] format is preceded by something that looks like misplaced color information, prefixes like <6>.
2. Make integers from floats.

It is inspired by this blog post.

#!/bin/sh                                                                                                               
# Translate dmesg timestamps to human readable format                                                                   

# uptime in seconds                                                                                                     
uptime=$(cut -d " " -f 1 /proc/uptime)                                                                                  

# remove fraction                                                                                                       
uptime=$(echo $uptime | cut -d "." -f1)                                                                                 

# run only if timestamps are enabled                                                                                    
if [ "Y" = "$(cat /sys/module/printk/parameters/time)" ]; then                                                          
  dmesg | sed "s/[^\[]*\[/\[/" | sed "s/^\[[ ]*\?\([0-9.]*\)\] \(.*\)/\\1 \\2/" | while read timestamp message; do      
    timestamp=$(echo $timestamp | cut -d "." -f1)                                                                       
    ts1=$(( $(busybox date +%s) - $uptime + $timestamp ))                                                               
    ts2=$(busybox date -d "@${ts1}")                                                                                    
    printf "[%s] %s\n" "$ts2" "$message"                                                                                
  done                                                                                                                  
else                                                                                                                    
  echo "Timestamps are disabled (/sys/module/printk/parameters/time)"                                                   
fi                                                                                                                      

Note, however, that this implementation is quite slow.