[TECK]

Hmmm, I can't test it in a live envionment because my server doesn't support the uptime, or passthru (PHP in save mode)...
But technically this is what it does:
$sys_ticks - shows the no. of seconds since the system is up
( $days * 60 * 24 ) - the days
( $hours * 60 ) - the hours
( $min * 60 ) - the minutes
Removing all those values should give you the seconds only... maybe one of the php gurus can explain what we do wrong? In theory it should work...

You could also do this... replace the function with this line:

$serveruptime = passthru( '/usr/bin/uptime' );