How to Change the Timezone in Linux - wikiHow
Posted on April 02, 2008 in How-to
Most modern Linux distributions have user-friendly programs to set the timezone, often accesible through the program menus or right-clicking the clock in a desktop environment such as KDE or GNOME. Failing that it's possible to manually change the system timezone in Linux in a few short steps.
1. Logged in as root, check which timezone your machine is currently using by executing `date`. You'll see something like Mon 17 Jan 2005 12:15:08 PM PST, PST in this case is the current timezone.
2. Change to the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo here you will find a list of time zone regions. Choose the most appropriate region, if you live in Canada or the US this directory is the "America" directory.
3. If you wish, backup the previous timezone configuration by copying it to a different location. Such as
mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime-old
- Create a symbolic link from the appropiate timezone to /etc/localtime. Example:
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Amsterdam /etc/localtime
- If you have the utility rdate, update the current system time by executing
/usr/bin/rdate -s time.nist.gov
6. Set the ZONE entry in the file /etc/sysconfig/clock file (e.g. "America/Los_Angeles")
7. Set the hardware clock by executing:
/sbin/hwclock --systohc