Changing timezone on Debian keeps Local Time in UTC

Question

I'm trying to get programs to log in local time for my own sanity.

I have updated my timezone with:

 dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

But the result of that command is:

Current default time zone: 'Australia/Adelaide'
Local time is now:      Mon May 20 03:09:52 UTC 2013.
Universal Time is now:  Mon May 20 03:09:52 UTC 2013.

Notice the UTC in Local time

Any reason why this may be?

I have done a lot of Googling but my problem seems different to all of them :(

Here are some more details:

# cat /etc/timezone
Australia/Adelaide

# date
Mon May 20 03:41:06 UTC 2013

# export TZ='Australia/Adelaide'; date
Mon May 20 13:16:11 CST 2013

Setting export TZ='Australia/Adelaide'; in my /etc/profile makes date work by default in a bash session but does not change the system log date (after restarting the service)

Edit:

# ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 May 10 14:48 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/

# ls /etc/localtime/
Adelaide    Chile    GMT        Japan      PST8PDT    Universal
Africa      Cuba     GMT+0      Kwajalein  Pacific    W-SU
America     EET      GMT-0      Libya      Poland     WET
Antarctica  EST      GMT0       MET        Portugal   Zulu
Arctic      EST5EDT  Greenwich  MST        ROC        iso3166.tab
Asia        Egypt    HST        MST7MDT    ROK        localtime
Atlantic    Eire     Hongkong   Mexico     Singapore  localtime.dpkg-new
Australia   Etc      Iceland    Mideast    SystemV    posix
Brazil      Europe   Indian     NZ         Turkey     posixrules
CET         Factory  Iran       NZ-CHAT    UCT        right
CST6CDT     GB       Israel     Navajo     US         zone.tab
Canada      GB-Eire  Jamaica    PRC        UTC

Answer:

Worked it out thanks to jamzed. for some reason I had /etc/localtime as a symlink... the IT Guy here set up the server using Turnkey 12 so maybe that was the problem.

# mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.old
# cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Adelaide /etc/localtime
# date
Thu May 23 09:36:17 CST 2013

Solution 1

Try this way:

$ sudo cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Adelaide /etc/localtime

Solution 2

I think the best way to achieve this, is by executing:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Comments

[Admin]

cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Adelaide /etc/localtime dit not change anything for me :( local time is still UTC, I have added what ls -l /etc/localtime says also.

[Admin]

Why did you create symlink there? You need to copy a one file... Fix it by removing symlink "rm /etc/localtime" and do cp as I wrote "cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Adelaide /etc/localtime" ;-)

[complistic]

symlink was there by default.. maybe a turnkey thing or something. mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.old cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Adelaide /etc/localtime fixed the problem :) Thank you!

[Anthon]

It is better to provide the steps here, and use the link as a reference for further details. That way your answer does not lose all of it value when the link becomes invalid.

[jhauris]

+1, this is definitely the right way to do it on debian systems.

[complistic]

Yep, dpkg-reconfigure tzdata was the first thing I tried. It didn’t work for me because /etc/localtime was a symlink for some reason. After fixing that both ways would change the timezone correctly.

[superhero]

yes! ppl seem to think so, but I'm using debian in a docker container.. then what?