How to Change Timezone on Ubuntu 18.04 & 16.04 LTS

All the operating systems have a default time zone configured. Sometimes users are required to change the default timezone to some other timezone as per their requirements on Linux system. This tutorial will help to change the timezone on Ubuntu 19.10, 19.04, 18.04 LTS, & 16.04 LTS systems.

Check Current Timezone

Linux uses /etc/localtime file as current systems timezone. We can simply use “date” command to check current timezone.

date

Mon Aug 12 05:10:58 UTC 2019

As per the above output, the current time zone is set to IST.

Change Timezone on Ubuntu

The Ubuntu operating systems keep all timezone configuration files inside /usr/share/zoneinfo/ directory. Before using the new configuration, rename or unlink old configuration file as:

sudo mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.old

Then create a symbolic link of /etc/localtime with new timezone settings file. For below example, I am using America/New_York (EST/PST) timezone for my server. To find out more timezone list visit here.

sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime

Your time zone has been changed successfully. Let’s check timezone again.

date

Mon Aug 12 01:11:55 EDT 2019