Category: Linux

How to set the Linux clock

This is a quick time setting procedure

If you are logged in as a user (which you should be), “su” to root and enter the following to set the current time:

| date -s “hh:mm:ss”

The time will be taken as 24-hour(military) time. Then type just the date command and see if it “took”. Linux should respond with a full date and time.

Now, set the CMOS hardware clock to the system software current time:

| hwclock –systohc

“hwclock” is a command in /sbin. It accepts commands from the terminal, as you see above, and is called from a halt script in init.d when the system is shutdown, to copy the system time into the hardware clock.

A list of zones available in your system can be found in /usr/share/zoneinfo/zone.tab . If your zone is not correct, you can append the correct zone to the time setting:

| date -s “hh:mm:sszzz”

where “zzz” is the zone

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