DKNSS

Network and Linux stuff

This is one of those things that I occasionally need to do, but always seem to forget.

I usually hit Google to find these commands and the process, however everyone seems to want to link to the /etc/localtime file instead of copying the file.  As this file is a main system file you need to ensure it is available at all times, so if you link accross a filesystem that becomes unavailable or corrupt, you potentially end up having issues while you try and recover your filesystems.

First step, find your time zone in /usr/share/zonedata, for me this is

/usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/NSW

Note that your timezone may be in a subdirecory of /usr/share/zoneinfo, as mine is shown above. Now the easy bit, copy the zone file to /etc/localtime, the following command should do it..

sudo cp -a /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/NSW /etc/localtime

If you have trouble running the above command, you could always use the following process, bit longer but, still gets the same outcome ..

sudo cp -a /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/NSW /etc/localtime
cp: overwrite `/etc/localtime'? y

You should now be able to run date and make sure your timezone settings are correct.

date
Sun May 17 09:41:25 EST 2009

Next, to ensure thie stays persistent across glibc updates, set the correct timezone in the clock config file.

sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/clock

Well, that should help me when I have to go through this process again, hope it helps someone else also ..