2 Methods To Change TimeZone in Linux
For this example, assume that your current timezone is UTC as shown below. You would like to change this to Asia Time.
#date
Fri Jul 19 18:16:21 IST 2013
On some distributions (for example, CentOS), the timezone is controlled by /etc/localtime file.
Delete the current localtime file under /etc/ directory
# cd /etc
#rm localtime
All Asia timezones are located under under the /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia directory as shown below.
# ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/
India Pakistan Nepal Kolkata Srilanka
Note: For other country timezones, browse the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory
Link the Asia file from the above Asia directory to the /etc/localtime directory as shown below.
# date
Fri Jul 19 18:16:21 IST 2013
Method 2: Change TimeZone Using /etc/timezone File
On some distributions (for example, Ubuntu), the timezone is controlled by /etc/timezone file.
For example, your current timezone might be US Eastern time (New York) as shown below.
# cat /etc/timezone
America/New_York
To change this to US Pacific time (Los Angeles), modify the /etc/timezone file as shown below.
# vim /etc/timezone
America/Los_Angeles
Also, set the timezone from the command line using the TZ variable.
# export TZ=America/Los_Angeles