Published January 05, 2018 by

How to change Timezone on Linux Server

For CentOS/RHEL 7

Check Current SystemTimezone

First, check current timezone used by your system using date command.

# date

As per above output, system current timezone is UTC.

Change Timezone of System

# timedatectl list-timezones

Now use the following command to change timezone to Asia/Kolkata.

# timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Kolkata

Now timezone has been changed successfully. Let us check timezone again.



For Ubuntu, Debian & LinuxMint

Check Current SystemTimezone

Linux uses /etc/localtime file as current systems timezone. We can simply use “date” command to check current timezone.


# date



As per above output, system current timezone is EST.

Change Timezone of System

First, rename or unlink the old file.

$ sudo mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.old

Now create a symbolic link of /etc/localtime with new timezone settings file. For below example, I am using Asia/Kolkata (IST) timezone for my server

$ sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kolkata /etc/localtime

Now timezone has been changed successfully. Let us check timezone again.