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Changing TimeZone in Linux System

  • In a linux system timezones are defined under the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo/.

    [root@3a1b47b409f3 /]# ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/
Africa      Atlantic   Canada  EST5EDT  GB   GMT0       Indian   Kwajalein  Mexico   PST8PDT   ROK        UTC    iso3166.tab  tzdata.zi
America     Australia  Chile   Egypt    GB-Eire  Greenwich  Iran     Libya  NZ   Pacific   Singapore  Universal  leapseconds  zone.tab
Antarctica  Brazil     Cuba    Eire GMT  HST        Israel   MET    NZ-CHAT  Poland    Turkey     W-SU   posix        zone1970.tab
Arctic      CET        EET     Etc  GMT+0    Hongkong   Jamaica  MST    Navajo   Portugal  UCT        WET    posixrules
Asia        CST6CDT    EST     Europe   GMT-0    Iceland    Japan    MST7MDT    PRC  ROC       US         Zulu   right
[root@3a1b47b409f3 /]#

  • A system identifies timezone from the file /etc/localtime and this file is generally linked with a zone file present in /usr/share/zoneinfo/.

    [root@3a1b47b409f3 /]# date
Sun Jun 13 17:13:17 UTC 2021
[root@3a1b47b409f3 /]# ls -ld /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Jan 13  2020 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC
[root@3a1b47b409f3 /]#

  • We can simply change the timezone by linking the file /etc/localtime with the respective zone file from /usr/share/zoneinfo/.

    [root@3a1b47b409f3 /]# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kolkata /etc/localtime
[root@3a1b47b409f3 /]# date
Sun Jun 13 22:44:23 IST 2021
[root@3a1b47b409f3 /]# ls -ld /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Jun 13 22:44 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kolkata
[root@3a1b47b409f3 /]#
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