Increasing your uptime

Let’s be honest. We’ve all been there.

• You need your uptime to be maxed so that you meet that 5 nines commitment someone in Sales made in order to win the deal, no matter what reality actually determines is possible.
• You need to increase you uptime.
• You need it fast.

Noone can afford time to listen to explanations of why 5 nines isn’t feasible because of <air quotes> “scheduled maintenance and reindexing” <air quotes> so you just need to increase the uptime.

Well, folks, strap in. We’ve used the skills built over the last 40 years of coding to bring you a disruptive, paradigm-shifting, blockchain-adjacent ¹ piece of software that literally creates additional uptime out of thin air. It uses no AI so its good for the environment too and can be quoted in your environmental reports.

We call it the Quantum Uptime Extender v1.0.

The Science (or Lack Thereof)

Every sysadmin knows that uptime is a finite resource, linearly correlated to the passage of time since the last kernel panic.

This revolutionary script utilizes highly sophisticated, enterprise-grade “asynchronous temporal padding.” In layman’s terms, it forces the CPU into a contemplate state for exactly five seconds.

By executing this script, you are effectively telling the universe, “Hold on a minute, I need five more seconds on the uptime clock.” And the universe, being a compliant construct within a Linux environment, obeys.

If you don’t believe the code works check to the end of this article to see how to test it. This test will work live in front of your manager. It only takes a short time to demonstrate the increase in uptime.

The “Code”

We know today’s diverse enterprise environments demand flexibility. You can’t just deploy a bash script on a Windows Server 2019 box without someone from Compliance having an aneurysm. (I finally know that because I now work in Compliance)

Therefore, in the spirit of true cross-platform interoperability, we are releasing this proprietary technology in both Bash and Python to the community for all to use.

The Bash Implementation (For the Purists)

Behold the raw power of shell scripting. Note the minimalist architecture. The sheer elegance.

#!/bin/bash
# Quantum Uptime Extender v1.0 - Bash Edition
# WARNING: Highly experimental temporal manipulation functions below.
# Copyright (C) 2025 promotum.co.uk
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# DISCLAIMER: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ANY USE IS AT YOUR 
# OWN RISK. THE AUTHOR(S) SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES RESULTING 
# FROM THE USE OF THIS SCRIPT.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

echo "Initiating temporal injection sequence..."

# The magic happens here.
# We are leveraging advanced kernel-level suspension protocols.
sleep 5

echo "Injection complete. 5 seconds added to uptime."

Save this file as uptimeextender.sh, don’t forget to make it executable

The Python Implementation (For the “Cloud Native” Crowd)

For those of you who prefer your time-extending scripts to be object-oriented and PEP-8 compliant, here is a beautiful Python implementation. Save this file as uptimeextender.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# Copyright (C) 2025 promotum.co.uk
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# DISCLAIMER: THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ANY USE IS AT YOUR 
# OWN RISK. THE AUTHOR(S) SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES RESULTING 
# FROM THE USE OF THIS SCRIPT.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

import time
import sys

# Quantum Uptime Extender v1.0 - Python Edition

def execute_temporal_shift(seconds):
    """
    Leverages the GIL to pause operational reality.
    Args:
        seconds (int): The amount of uptime to generate.
    """
    print(f"Attempting to shift uptime by {seconds} seconds...")
    try:
        # This utilizes C-level bindings to halt execution threads.
        # Extremely advanced stuff.
        time.sleep(seconds)
    except InterruptedError:
        print("Temporal shift failed! The timeline is collapsing!")
        sys.exit(1)
    
    print("Success. Uptime padded.")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # We hardcode 5 here to prevent accidentally pausing the universe forever.
    execute_temporal_shift(5)

Proving this works with a live demo

You might be asking, “It is wise to test something so cutting edge in front of my manager or should I pre run it and just show the logs?” Hey, have faith, this will work!

#!/bin/bash
# Quantum Uptime Extender v1.0 - Bash Edition demo deployment

echo -n "Uptime before:" 
uptime
./uptimeextender.sh
echo -n "Uptime afer:"
uptime

Save this file as uptimedemo.sh, don’t forget to make it executable

Run this command with

./uptimedemo.sh

and you will see the uptime has magically been increased.

Personal Challenge

We’ve left a small challenge for you to create a demo using the python version. Improve your skills by doing, not just reading. Make your own demo with the python script and be amazed at what you can achieve.

Pro-Tip for Managers:

Set up a Cron job to run this script every ten seconds. Echo the output of the script to a dedicated log file as auditable evidence that you’re are proactively adding time to the uptime of the server.

1. (okay, it is so adjacent its not actually linked, at least not really in any way we’ve been able to identify, but those words often work so we recommend you use them) ↩︎