How to change the time zone in Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS 7)

🎫 Content is validated at 2023-03-05 for

✅ Ubuntu 22.04

✅ Debian 11.6

✅ CentOS 7.9

To modify the time zone, you need to use the root user or a user with sudo privileges.

Check the current time zone

In modern Linux like Ubuntu, Debian or CentOS, the current time zone can be checked using the following command.

timedatectl

The output is as follows.

      Local time: Wed 2021-11-06 22:43:42 UTC
  Universal time: Wed 2021-11-06 22:43:42 UTC
        RTC time: Wed 2021-11-06 22:43:42
       Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
     NTP enabled: no
NTP synchronized: yes
 RTC in local TZ: no
      DST active: n/a

As you can see from the above output, the time zone currently in use is UTC.

Another way to check the current time zone is to check the /etc/localtime file, which is a soft-linked file that points to the time zone file currently in use.

ls -l /etc/localtime

The output is as follows.

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 29 Dec 11 09:25 /etc/localtime -> . /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC

Again, you can see that the UTC time zone is currently in use.

Modify time zone

First check the list of currently available time zones.

timedatectl list-timezones

The output is as follows.

...
America/Tijuana
America/Toronto
America/Tortola
America/Vancouver
America/Whitehorse
America/Winnipeg
...

Next you can set the time zone, using the following command.

timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Shanghai

Note: You may need sudo privileges to execute the above command. sudo timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Shanghai

In the above example we set the timezone to China Standard Time Asia/Shanghai.

To recheck the current time zone.

timedatectl

The output is as follows.

      Local time: three 2021-11-10 09:34:45 CST
  Universal time: three 2021-11-10 01:34:45 UTC
        RTC time: 三 2021-11-10 09:34:44
       Time zone: Asia/Shanghai (CST, +0800)
     NTP enabled: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
 RTC in local TZ: yes
      DST active: n/a

The time zone can also be modified by using the softlink method.

rm /etc/localtime
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Shanghai /etc/localtime

Note: You may need sudo privileges to execute the above command. sudo timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Shanghai

Summary

Modern Linux has made it very easy to change time zones, just use timedatectl. Of course you can also modify the time zone in a more traditional way, by using a softlink.