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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 do I change the hour to be UTC/GMT +1?

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3 Answers 3

14

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
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  • Europe/London is not UTC+1
    – bebbo
    Mar 28, 2016 at 23:47
  • I did as you described but date still yields the old time? What should be done to sync date with /etc/localtime ?
    – xetra11
    Sep 20, 2018 at 5:23
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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.

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  • Isn't "Europe/Paris" the same as CET which differs from UTC+1?
    – bebbo
    Mar 28, 2016 at 23:51
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I have tried to do this today, using /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/GMT+1 as link. (CentOS 7.0) In a strage way, I've got -1 hour. So I have tried GMT-1, and have now +1 hour. Looks strange, but works for me.

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