How to change time-zone settings from the command line

Question

I have a virtual machine that is set to PST that a couple of colleagues have in different time-zones.

If I wanted to change the time-zone to EST and GMT, what do I need to do?

Solution 1

Use timedatectl

sudo timedatectl set-timezone <timeszone>

---

Examples:

• Timezone as EST

  sudo timedatectl set-timezone EST
  

• Timezone as UTC

  sudo timedatectl set-timezone UTC
  

• Listing all valid Timezones

  timedatectl list-timezones
  

---

This command is perfect for automation scripts since it doesn't require any user interaction while compared to the other given answer based on dpkg-reconfigure tzdata.

Solution 2

As root you have to execute:

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

A menu based tool should be started that allows you to change the timezone.

Solution 3

The following also work. For GMT:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT /etc/localtime

For EST:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST /etc/localtime

Solution 4

The most ease way especially to a server is to list timezones:

timedatectl list-timezones

And choose yours, for example:

timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Athens

Thats it! , :-)

Solution 5

Edit the timezone file at the /etc folder as:

Etc/GMT

You can use the next format:

Region "/" City 

Example of /etc/timezone:

Europe/Athens

or

Europe/Paris
Europe/London

You may experiment with the: dpkg-reconfigure tzdata and check cat the timezone file.

You must reboot or start again a service (not the ntp service). I do not know which one. If somebody knows please share with us. (Tested on Ubuntu 15.10 the change is taken into account instantly)

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Comments

[Admin]

Or easily echo UTC > /etc/timezone

[Phil Ryan]

Not a fan of +1 comments, but am putting one here since this worked for me in the best way. I was wanting a single one-line command line tool to change the timezone, rather than wanting to launch some whole either menu or gui program (I don't know what tzdata does, how it works, but I don't need to with this one line command). Thanks!

[Asfand Qazi]

I think it would be better to link one of the city files rather than GMT or EST, as then they will keep track of daylight savings time, whereas linking (e.g.) GMT will not change the system time to reflect when daylight savings is in effect in your city. e.g.: ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime

[user332660]

works like a charm ;)

[Daniel Bower]

Interestingly, it is doing something a little different than tzdata. I had an issue with Java time being different than the system time after applying a patch. Tzdata didn't work to fix the issue, but this did.

[김석용]

this didn't work for me; however the dpkg-reconfigure did the trick.

[김석용]

14.04.4 ubuntu server

[김석용]

Not only did the timedatectl report anything or give wrong status, the timezone was still wrong in date commands run from the shell; the dpkg-reconfigure tzdata and switching to UTC was instantaneous - even the time on zsh prompt jumped to another timezone

[Jossef Harush Kadouri]

@AnttiHaapala, thanks for sharing :) i'll check that. Any change you had [NTP / VM Hypervisor tools] race conditioned your command ?

[김석용]

I don't think so.

[code_dredd]

A quick note that this command is meant for systemd-based installations. If your system is an older version, then you may need to rely on tzdata instead.

[Sun]

This actually worked for me. I think there's some bug with Docker, ansible (?). Both timedatectl and dpkg-reconfigure tzdata failed for me. After I copied, the time zone changed from EST to PDT.

[tanius]

Note, this timedatectl solution persists after a reboot. No need for any additional steps to make it reboot safe!

[Offboard]

Perfect, I use timedatectl set-timezone America/Maceio it's works.

[Hasan Tıngır]

this is the best

[Martin Thoma]

You might want to mention tzselect to find the desired timezone string.

[Parto]

Please explain at least how this command works to change the timezone.

[J Roysdon]

I would caution against this. If something or someone accidentally overwrites /etc/localtime you have just lost your zoneinfo file. It's better to just copy the zoneinfo file over the /etc/localtime file.

[Nam G VU]

I get > tzdata is not installed

[cytsunny]

On docker images timedatectl may not be installed out of the box, and it is really overkill to install a tools just to change time zone. This is the only answer that allow setting timezone with system command only. In this sense, I would say this is the best answer.