I had a minor failure on my Pi Zero 2W called tackpi last night and
had to power it down, remove the SD card, and run fsck on the card
in one of my Linux boxes to fix the file system error.

However systemd claims the sytem never stopped:-

chris@tackpi$ systemctl --user status fencelog
? fencelog.service - fencelog service.
Loaded: loaded
(/home/chris/.config/systemd/user/fencelog.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2026-07-03 20:03:13 BST; 15h ago
Invocation: 72a2640f0fb64a27bd5de30ad688159b
Main PID: 1044 (python3)
Tasks: 1 (limit: 218)
CPU: 436ms
CGroup:
/user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/fencelog.service
ÀÄ1044 /usr/bin/python3 /home/chris/bin/fencelog.py

Jul 03 20:03:13 tackpi systemd[953]: Started fencelog.service -
fencelog service..
chris@tackpi$ w
11:59:33 up 31 min, 1 user, load average: 0.15, 0.04, 0.01
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
chris pts/0 192.168.1.5 11:57 0.00s 0.20s 0.04s w
chris@tackpi$


So systemctl says fencelog service has been running since just after
20:00 last night. But, quite correctly, the uptime is reported as
only 31 minutes sice I put the SD card back in and powered the Pi up
again at about 11:30 this morning.


--
Chris Green
ú

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Chris Green wrote:

However systemd claims the sytem never stopped:-

(Speaking as a 'neophyte' here)

It seems to me that systemd is only saying/reporting what the
fencelog.service is 'reporting'; whereas the 'uptime' is reporting on
'since boot'.

After all, it /was/ an 'unnatural' shutdown.

At the outset, I was completely unfamiliar with fencing, it not being
part of my world. But now that I know a little more about it, a failure
to fencelog.service document your power shutdown isn't surprising to me.

--
Mike Easter

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)