How to Set or Change the Time Zone in Linux Server


1. Check  the Current Time Zone

timedatectl
  
  Local time: Mon 2020-07-06 22:22:40 +08
  Universal time: Mon 2020-07-06 14:22:40 UTC
        RTC time: Mon 2020-07-06 14:22:40
       Time zone: Asia/Singapore (+08, +0800)
     NTP enabled: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
 RTC in local TZ: no
      DST active: n/a

The output above shows that the system’s time zone is set to Singapore.

The system time zone is configured by a link i.e. /etc/localtime file to a binary time zone’s identifier in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.

$ ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Jul  6 22:03 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Singapore

2. Change  the Time Zone Now

Make sure to identify the exact time zone which needs to be set in Region/City format.

To view all available time zones, use the timedatectl command or list the files in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory:

# timedatectl list-timezones

America/Montserrat
America/Nassau
America/New_York
America/Nipigon
America/Nome
America/Noronha


Run Command
sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York
or  doing in UTC then

sudo timedatectl set-timezone UTC

To verify the change, invoke the timedatectl command again:


timedatectl
                    Local time: Mon 2020-07-06 14:28:53 UTC
  Universal time: Mon 2020-07-06 14:28:53 UTC
        RTC time: Mon 2020-07-06 14:28:53
       Time zone: UTC (UTC, +0000)
     NTP enabled: no
NTP synchronized: yes
 RTC in local TZ: yes
      DST active: n/a

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We can also change Time Zone by Creating a Symlink(Especially used in old system)

If you are running an older Linux distribution and 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.

Remove the current symlink or file:

sudo rm -rf /etc/localtime or  sudo unlink /etc/localtime 

Identify the timezone you want to configure and create a symlink:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC /etc/localtime

Verify the /etc/localtime file 

 ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 25 Jul  6  2020 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC