set timezone ubuntu, centos, debian

Set the timezone

To set the timezone of your system clock do the following:

cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/La_Paz /etc/localtime

Choose the right timezone for you.

Automatically adjust your computer clock

To have your system to automatically adjust time we need to install ntp. Get it from your repository. Once installed you can configure it this way:

Edit the file /etc/ntpd.conf. It will look like this:

# With the default settings below, ntpd will only synchronize your clock.
#
# For details, see:
# - the ntp.conf man page
# - http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/GettingStarted
# - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_Time_Protocol_daemon

# Associate to public NTP pool servers; see http://www.pool.ntp.org/
server 0.pool.ntp.org
server 1.pool.ntp.org
server 2.pool.ntp.org

# Only allow read-only access from localhost
restrict default noquery nopeer
restrict 127.0.0.1
restrict ::1

# Location of drift and log files
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
logfile /var/log/ntp.log

# NOTE: If you run dhcpcd and have lines like 'restrict' and 'fudge' appearing
# here, be sure to add '-Y -N' to the dhcpcd_ethX variables in /etc/conf.d/net

Be sure to start the daemon, and to make it start automatically when the system boots.

On Arch Linux is: /etc/rc.d/ntpd start on Debian and derivatives /etc/init.d/ntpd start

Update from the command line against a time server

You can update the clock manually, without the need of the daemon with ntpdate

ntpdate 129.6.15.28

You will get something like this:

19 Apr 15:45:23 ntpdate[10948]: step time server 129.6.15.28 offset -45.697084 sec