Most modern Linux distributions have user-friendly programs to
set the timezone, often accesible through the program menus or
right-clicking the clock in a desktop environment such as KDE or
GNOME. Failing that it's possible to manually change the system
timezone in Linux in a few short steps.
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Steps
Logged in as root, check which timezone your machine is
currently using by executing `date`. You'll see something
like Mon 17 Jan 2005 12:15:08 PM PST, PST in this case
is the current timezone.
Change to the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo here
you will find a list of time zone regions. Choose the most
appropriate region, if you live in Canada or the US this directory
is the "America" directory.
If you wish, backup the previous timezone configuration by
copying it to a different location. Such as
mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime-old
Create a symbolic link from the appropiate timezone to
/etc/localtime. Example:
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Amsterdam /etc/localtime
If you have the utility rdate, update the current system time
by executing
/usr/bin/rdate -s time.nist.gov
Set the ZONE entry in the file
/etc/sysconfig/clock file (e.g.
"America/Los_Angeles")
Set the hardware clock by executing:
/sbin/hwclock --systohc
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On some versions of RedHat Linux, Slackware, Gentoo, SuSE,
Debian, Ubuntu, and anything else that is "normal", the command to
display and change the time is 'date', not 'clock'
On RedHat Linux there is a utility called "Setup" that allows
one to select the timezone from a list, but you must have installed
the 'redhat-config-date' package.
Some applications (such as PHP) have separate timezone settings
from the system timezone.
On some systems, there is a system utility provided that will
prompt for the correct timezone and make the proper changes to the
system configuration. For example, Debian
provides the "tzsetup" or "tzconfig"
utility.