This article show how you can obtain the UNIX epoch time (number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC) using the Linux bash "date" command. It also shows how you can convert a UNIX epoch time to a human readable time.
Obtain UNIX epoch time using bash
Obtaining the UNIX epoch time using bash is easy. Use the build-in date command and instruct it to output the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. You can do this by passing a format string as parameter to the date command. The format string for UNIX epoch time is '%s'.