Verify it either by listing the /etc/localtime file or invoking the date The localtime standard is dependent on the current time zone, while UTC is the. Available Time Zones -11:00, Pacific/Niue -11:00, Pacific/PagoPago, Pacific/Samoa, US/Samoa -10:00, America/Adak, America/Atka, US/Aleutian -10:00, Etc/GMT. : sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime There are two time standards: localtime and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Identify the timezone you want to configure and create a symlink If you are running an older Linux distributionĪnd the timedatectl utility is not present on your system, you can change the timezone by symlinking /etc/localtime to the time zone in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory. Current UTC Date/Time (ISO8601): T08:26:09.091983+00:00 Local Times UTC offset: +00:00 Local Times UTC offset, in seconds: 0 Unixtime: 1662625569. Changing the Time Zone by Creating a Symlink # Mission accomplished! You’ve successfully changed your system’s time zone. To verify the change, invoke the timedatectl command again: timedatectl Local time: Tue 13:55:09 EST Once you identify which time zone is accurate to your location, run the following command as root or sudoįor example, to change the system’s timezone to America/New_York you would type: sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York

To view all available time zones, use the timedatectl command or list the files in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory: timedatectl list-timezones. The time zone naming convention usually uses a “Region/City” format. Etc Etc/GMT+6, Etc/GMT-4, Etc/UTC Etc/GMT+7, Etc/GMT-5, Etc/Universal Etc/GMT+8, Etc/GMT-6, Etc/UTC Etc/GMT+9, Etc/GMT-7, Etc/Zulu Etc/GMT+10, Etc/GMT-8. The system time zone is configured by symlinking the /etc/localtime file to a binary time zone’s identifier in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.Īnother way to check the time zone is to view the path the symlink points to using the lsĬommand: ls -l /etc/localtime lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Dec 3 16:29 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTCīefore changing the time zone, you’ll need to find out the long name of the time zone you want to use. The output above shows that the system’s time zone is set to UTC. To view the current time zone, invoke the timedatectl command without any options or arguments: timedatectl Local time: Tue 16:30:44 UTC It is available on all modern systemd-based Linux systems. Timedatectl is a command-line utility that allows you to view and change the system’s time and date.

This tutorial covers the steps necessary to set or change the time zone in Linux. The time zone is also used for logs timestamps. For example, the cron daemon uses the system’s time zone for executing cron jobs. Using the correct time zone is essential for many systems related tasks and processes. Typically the time zone is set during the installation of the operational system, but it can be easily changed at a later time. A time zone is a geographic region that has the same standard time.

Etc utc time zone