A time zone is nothing but a region of the globe that observes a uniform standard time for constitutional, business and cultural purposes. In a short time zone refers to the local time of a country. You can easily change timezone in CentOS Linux using the following methods.
CentOS timezone config files and directories
- /usr/share/zoneinfo/ – The system timezone directory contains the files as per timezone name. For example, the file /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York represents time zone for New York.
- /etc/localtime – It is a symlink to the file localtime or to the correct timezone file in the system located in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ directory.
Change Timezone on a CentOS 6 and 7
Let us see some examples to change timezone or set a new time zone on a CentOS Linux.
How do I see the current time zone on CentOS Linux?
Type the date command or the ls command:
$ date
$ ls -l /etc/localtime
Sample outputs:
Another option is to type the following command on systemd based distro such as CentOS 7 to see timezone along with the grep command and timedatectl command:
timedatectl
timedatectl | grep -i 'time zone'
date
Change the current timezone in CentOS 7
To find list of all available time zones, run:
# timedatectl list-timezones
##*** Grep possible Asian timezones ***##
# timedatectl list-timezones | grep Asia
Sample outputs:
Africa/Abidjan Africa/Accra Africa/Addis_Ababa Africa/Algiers Africa/Asmara Africa/Bamako Africa/Bangui Africa/Banjul .... .. America/Dawson America/Dawson_Creek America/Denver America/Detroit America/Dominica America/Edmonton America/Eirunepe America/El_Salvador America/Fortaleza America/Glace_Bay .... .. Pacific/Saipan Pacific/Tahiti Pacific/Tarawa Pacific/Tongatapu Pacific/Wake Pacific/Wallis
The syntax is as follows to set timezone and need to run as root user:
# timedatectl set-timezone time_zone
In this example, set timezone to America/Chicago
# timedatectl set-timezone America/Chicago
Verify new settings by typing the following two commands:
# date
# ls -l /etc/localtime
Sample outputs:
Change the current timezone in CentOS 6 and older
You need to use the ln command to set timezone on Centos 6. Type the following commands as root:
cp /etc/localtime /root/old.timezone rm /etc/localtime ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime |
Verify new settings by typing the following two commands:
date ls -l /etc/localtime |
Conclusion
You just learned how to change Timezone on CentOS Linux version 5, 6, and 7. The commands described here should also work with RHEL version 5, 6, and 7. For more info on timezone see this wiki page here. I also suggest that you read the following man pages using the man command:
$ man 1 timedatectl
11 comment
U can use tzselect command