Ubuntu keeps displaying UTC time despite setting timezone

unity virtualbox time

7,119

Solution 1

You need to reconfigure timezone data.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Solution 2

Go to System Settings > Time % Date and set your location (in my case Paris)

The select the Clock tab and check both Time in auto-detected and Time in other locations. Then select Choose Location and add in (say) UTC or any other location you may require.

Then you will be able to select the time and date on the top bar with left clock of the mouse and select which time you wish to have displayed.

7,119

wheeler

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

wheeler over 1 year
Something appears to be broken with regards to how Unity displays the system time in the current time zone. I am running an Ubuntu 16.04 guest in VirtualBox, on a Windows 10 host. I have changed the timezone by linking /etc/localtime to /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York (because sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York didn't do anything). When I execute timedatectl, it reports the proper time and timezone:
```
$ timedatectl
      Local time: Mon 2018-11-12 10:54:13 EST
  Universal time: Mon 2018-11-12 15:54:13 UTC
        RTC time: Mon 2018-11-12 15:54:12
       Time zone: America/New_York (EST, -0500)
 Network time on: yes
NTP synchronized: no
 RTC in local TZ: no
```
However, for whatever reason, Unity is still incorrectly reporting the time in UTC time, even after rebooting the VM:

How do I get Unity to properly display the time in the local timezone?
- Joshua Besneatte over 5 years
  
  have you tried setting your timezone from the settings gui?
- wheeler over 5 years
  
  Yes, but it had no effect.
- abu-ahmed al-khatiri over 5 years
  
  i think you forgot to add a argument --adjust-system-clock
24601 over 5 years

@wheeler If this answer solved the issue for you, perhaps you might be kind enough to mark it off as the best answer which will aid other users with similar issues. Thankyou.
wheeler over 5 years

The system clock is not in local time, as noted by the screenshot of timedatectl.
wheeler over 5 years

Performing the steps you have outlined had no effect.
wheeler over 5 years

Running sudo timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock yields Failed to set local RTC: Access denied.
abu-ahmed al-khatiri over 5 years

@wheeler as mentions the output of your command timedatectl, you get : Access denied couse not yet activated your RTC, did you try my answered?
wheeler over 5 years

Your answer is not clear. I tried disabling NTP with the first command, and then ran timedatectl set-local-rtc ...
wheeler over 5 years

Holy frick that did it. I am going to run through the same steps to ensure that solved the problem.
dataviews about 4 years

confirmed this worked for me on AWS ec2 ubuntu distribution. thank you :)