Posted by Steve on Sun 14 Aug 2005 at 16:33
Whilst changing the timezone of a machine once it has been installed is not a very common job it does seem to be something that many people struggle with.
When it comes to Debian systems the simple way to edit your timezone is to use the /usr/bin/tzselect command.
The tzselect command will prompt you for your region and then offer you a list of cities within that region.
For example selecting "Europe" from the available regions will present you with the following list of available cities to choose from:
Amsterdam Andorra Athens Belfast Belgrade Berlin Bratislava Brussels Bucharest Budapest Chisinau Copenhagen Dublin Gibraltar Helsinki Istanbul Kaliningrad Kiev Lisbon Ljubljana London Luxembourg Madrid Malta Mariehamn Minsk Monaco Moscow Nicosia Oslo Paris Prague Riga Rome Samara San_Marino Sarajevo Simferopol Skopje Sofia Stockholm Tallinn Tirane Tiraspol Uzhgorod Vaduz Vatican Vienna Vilnius Warsaw Zagreb Zaporozhye Zurich
Once you've set your timezone you might wish to change the UTC setting, upon Debian machines you can find that in the file /etc/default/rcS. Although changing this will require a reboot.
(UTC refers to "Universal Time", the time upon your machine is calculated from that into the so-called "local time".)
If you find that your machine is not keeping the correct time properly you might wish to investigate using NTP to sync your clock.
This article can be found online at the Debian Administration website at the following bookmarkable URL (along with associated comments):
This article is copyright 2005 Steve - please ask for permission to republish or translate.