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Change Local Time Zone?

Posted February 27, 2020 3.5k views
NginxUbuntu 18.04

Hi there,

I acted before thinking this through. I was working in my WordPress (LEMP) site and noticed the time was off. Instead of making the Local Timezone fix in Settings > General as one normally does, I tried changing it through SSH.

This is my current configuration for $ timedatectl

                      Local time: Thu 2020-02-27 16:34:51 EST
                  Universal time: Thu 2020-02-27 21:34:51 UTC
                        RTC time: Thu 2020-02-27 21:34:52
                       Time zone: UTC (EST, -0500)
       System clock synchronized: yes
systemd-timesyncd.service active: no
                 RTC in local TZ: no

My WordPress General Settings now shows:

Universal time is 2020-02-27 16:28:00. Local time is 2020-02-27 16:28:00.

So, I’m guessing the (EST, -0500) for Time zone: UTC (EST, -0500) is coming from Local time.

When I check $ date it shows me the local EST time instead of the UTC that I’m looking for.

Despite how easy it was to mess this up, I can’t seem to undo the change.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

TIA!

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By:
aerynlynne

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1 answer
KFSys February 27, 2020

Hi @aerynlynne,

The system timezone is configured by symlinking /etc/localtime to a binary timezone identifier in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory. Alternatively, you can also check the current system’s timezone by displaying the contents of the /etc/timezone file.

cat /etc/timezone

There are a few possibilities to change the timezone. The first one is using timedatectl 

timedatectl list-timezones

You’ll something like 

Europe/Oslo
Europe/Paris
Europe/Podgorica
Europe/Prague
Europe/Riga
Europe/Rome
Europe/Samara

Once you identify which time zone is accurate to your location, run the following command:

sudo timedatectl set-timezone your_time_zone

For example, to change the system’s timezone to Europe/Rome:

sudo timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Rome ```

Run the timedatectl command to verify the changes

Regards,
KDSys
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  • aerynlynne February 27, 2020

    Hi KDSys,

    Thanks for the info, but it doesn’t answer my issue though. (It’s pretty much the same answer you gave for https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/timestamp-for-local-time as well.)

    I’ve already gone through timedatectl and can’t seem to change Local Time to UTC.

    OR alternatively, have Time Zone: UTC not include EST.

    cat /etc/timezone does show UTC, but that’s not affecting the area I need changed.

    Reply Report
    • KFSys February 28, 2020

      Hi @aerynlynne,

      If you run the command I gave in my previous reply 

      sudo timedatectl set-timezone UTC

      What happens? Does it give an error or just nothing changes?

      Reply Report
      • aerynlynne February 29, 2020

        Hi @KDSys,

        I’ve tried that line repeatedly. It only partially affects the Timezone line, but not the area that I needed changed (the area within the brackets is what I need to affect).

        I’ve figured out what’s going on, and have created a band-aid of sorts.

        This is my latest result:

                              Local time: Sat 2020-02-29 23:04:40 GMT
                  Universal time: Sat 2020-02-29 23:04:40 UTC
                        RTC time: Sat 2020-02-29 23:04:41
                       Time zone: UTC (GMT, +0000)
       System clock synchronized: yes
systemd-timesyncd.service active: yes
                 RTC in local TZ: no

        The first article I read on changing timezones, discussed this method:

        cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Choice_Of_Zone /etc/localtime

        Which, I’ve since learned is so wrong.

        Because while it changed the Local time as requested, it also changed the overall Time Zone which is not optimal.

        Since I still can’t get it to accept UTC for the Local time (the error message taught me that /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC file and the /etc/localtime file are the same), I chose GMT for the local timezone and will cross-fingers that this doesn’t cause issue for my WordPress installations in the future.

        Thanks for your help,

        Aeryn

        Reply Report
        • KFSys March 2, 2020

          Hi @aerynlynne,

          That’s a pretty good band aid to be honest, I’ll try and recreate your problem on my enviroment so that I can debut it more.

          As soon as have any more suggestions, I’ll do a followup here.

          Reply Report
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