How to change the date of Linux to UTC/GMT +1?

Question

I need to change the date of my system. I'm running a Linux CentOS 5.6

# date +%Z
UTC
# date
Thu Oct  6 11:42:45 UTC 2011

How to change the hour to be UTC/GMT +1?

Best Regards,

Hydaral · Answer 1 · 2011-10-06 11:55:13Z

The normal way is to set your timezone. There are a bunch of files stored by region in the following directory:

/usr/share/zoneinfo

Take a look and find the one which matches your region. Then you have to create a symlink from /etc/localtime:

sudo rm /etc/localtime
sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime

grawity · Answer 2 · 2011-10-06 11:52:10Z

You need to change the timezone.

To do it system-wide, symlink /etc/localtime to the apropriate file in /usr/share/zoneinfo. For example:
```
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Paris /etc/localtime
```
In CentOS, you might need to also edit /etc/sysconfig/clock.
To change the timezone just for the current user, set $TZ instead:
```
export TZ="Europe/Paris"
```

Note that date -u must always return correct UTC time.

2 Answers