Set Time Zone on CentOS 7

Checking the Current Timezone

In CentOS and other modern Linux distros, you can use the timedatectl command to display and set the current system’s time and timezone.

timedatectl

The output below shows that the system’s timezone is set to UTC:

Local time: Wed 2019-02-06 22:43:42 UTC
Universal time: Wed 2019-02-06 22:43:42 UTC
RTC time: Wed 2019-02-06 22:43:42
Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
NTP enabled: no
NTP synchronized: yes
RTC in local TZ: no
DST active: n/a

The system timezone is configured by symlinking /etc/localtime to a binary timezone identifier in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory. So, another option to check the timezone is to show the path the symlink points to using the ls command:

ls -l /etc/localtime

lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 29 Dec 11 09:25 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC

Changing Timezone in CentOS

Before changing the timezone, you’ll need to find out the long name for the timezone you want to use. The timezone naming convention usually uses a “Region/City” format.

To list all available time zones, you can either list the files in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory or use the timedatectl command.

timedatectl list-timezones
...
America/Tijuana
America/Toronto
America/Tortola
America/Vancouver
America/Whitehorse
America/Winnipeg
...

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

sudo timedatectl set-timezone your_time_zone

For example, to change the system’s timezone to America/Toronto:

sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Toronto

Run the timedatectl command to verify the changes:

timedatectl
Local time: Wed 2019-02-06 17:47:10 EST
Universal time: Wed 2019-02-06 22:47:10 UTC
RTC time: Wed 2019-02-06 22:47:10
Time zone: America/Toronto (EST, -0500)
NTP enabled: no
NTP synchronized: yes
RTC in local TZ: no
DST active: no
Last DST change: DST ended at
Sun 2018-11-04 01:59:59 EDT
Sun 2018-11-04 01:00:00 EST
Next DST change: DST begins (the clock jumps one hour forward) at
Sun 2019-03-10 01:59:59 EST
Sun 2019-03-10 03:00:00 EDT

Changing the Timezone by Creating a Symlink

If you are running an older version of CentOS and the timedatectl command is not present on your system, you can change the timezone by symlinking /etc/localtime to the timezone file in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.

Delete the current /etc/localtime file or symlink:

sudo rm -rf /etc/localtime

Identify the timezone you want to configure and create a symlink:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Toronto /etc/localtime

You can verify it either by listing the /etc/localtime file or issuing the date command:

date
Wed Feb 6 17:52:58 EST 2019