NTP Adjust date on Linux

If you want to set date/time on linux manually (instead of using synchronization like ntp) you may use the date command to do it.

Login as root and run the following command, it will show you the

current date/time.

[root@servername ~]# date

Output will be like Tue Aug 23 12:32:22 EDT 2011

Now to set the desired date/time use the same date command with an argument of your required date/time as following format;

date MMDDhhmmYYYY

MM – Two digits of month (e.g. 08)
DD – Two digits of day of month (e.g. 24)
hh – Two digits of hour 24 hours format (e.g. 22)
mm – Two digits of minutes (e.g. 40)
YYYY – Four digits of year (e.g. 2011)

So, to set a date/time for 24th August 2011, 10:40 PM you may run the command as below

[root@servername ~]# date 082422402011

after successful execution of the above command, your machine’s date/time be changed accordingly.

Some Magic

ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com

Set the Hardware Clock to the current System Time.

# hwclock –systohc

Set the System Time from the Hardware Clock.

# hwclock –hctosys