How To Change Timezone on a CentOS 6,7 and 8

CentOS timezone config files and directories

  1. /usr/share/zoneinfo/ – The system timezone directory contains the files as per timezone name. For example, the file /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_Yorkrepresents time zone for New York.
  2. /etc/localtime – It is a symlink to the file localtime or to the correct timezone file in the system located in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ directory.

Change Timezone on a CentOS 6 and 7

Let us see some examples to change timezone or set a new time zone on a CentOS Linux.

How do I see the current time zone on CentOS Linux?

Type the date command or the ls command:
$ date
$ ls -l /etc/localtime

Another option is to type the following command on systemd based distro such as CentOS 7 to see timezone along with the grep command and timedatectl command:
timedatectl
timedatectl | grep -i 'time zone'
date

Change the current timezone in CentOS 7

To find list of all available time zones, run:
# timedatectl list-timezones
##*** Grep possible Asian timezones ***##
# timedatectl list-timezones | grep Asia
Sample outputs:

Africa/Abidjan
Africa/Accra
Africa/Addis_Ababa
Africa/Algiers
Africa/Asmara
Africa/Bamako
Africa/Bangui
Africa/Banjul
....
..
America/Dawson
America/Dawson_Creek
America/Denver
America/Detroit
America/Dominica
America/Edmonton
America/Eirunepe
America/El_Salvador
America/Fortaleza
America/Glace_Bay
....
..
Pacific/Saipan
Pacific/Tahiti
Pacific/Tarawa
Pacific/Tongatapu
Pacific/Wake
Pacific/Wallis

The syntax is as follows to set timezone and need to run as root user:
# timedatectl set-timezone time_zone
In this example, set timezone to America/Chicago
# timedatectl set-timezone America/Chicago
Verify new settings by typing the following two commands:
# date
# ls -l /etc/localtime

Change the current timezone in CentOS 6 and older

You need to use the ln command to set timezone on Centos 6. Type the following commands as root:

cp /etc/localtime /root/old.timezone
rm /etc/localtime
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime

Verify new settings by typing the following two commands:

date
ls -l /etc/localtime

 

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