By default dmesg command print kernel ring buffer using the timestamp for each logged message. It is easy to change this behavior and display date/time in a human-readable form using just one additional parameter. Still, sometimes it is not supported, so I will shortly touch upon this topic. $ dmesg [...] [ 1.028871] Linux agpgart interface v0.103 [ 1.028940] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: Intel Sandybridge Chipset [ 1.028999] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected gtt size: 2097152K total, 262144K mappable [ 1.029857] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected 65536K stolen memory [...] How to convert timestamps to human-readable form? The easiest way is to use -T or --ctime parameter. $ dmesg -T [...] [Sat Oct 19 12:43:26 2013] Linux agpgart interface v0.103 [Sat Oct 19 12:43:26 2013] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: Intel Sandybridge Chipset [Sat Oct 19 12:43:26 2013] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected gtt size: 2097152K total, 262144K mappable [Sat Oct 19 12:43:26