In CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 system, A new command used to set date and time is “timedatectl“. this command is distributed as part of the systemd system and service manager. you can use this command to change the date and time, set the time zone, check the current date and time or others. In this post, you will learn how to:
#1 Displaying the current date and time using “timedatectl” command
#2 Changing the current date and time using “timedatectl” command
#3 Changing the TimeZone using “timedatectl” command
CentOS 7 Check The Current Date And Time
To check the current date and time for your system, you can just simply issue the “timedatectl” command in command line interface, type:
timedatectl
Outputs:
[root@devops ~]# timedatectl Local time: Thu 2018-07-05 14:14:54 UTC Universal time: Thu 2018-07-05 14:14:54 UTC RTC time: Thu 2018-07-05 14:14:54 Time zone: UTC (UTC, +0000) NTP enabled: yes NTP synchronized: yes RTC in local TZ: no DST active: n/a
From the above output of command “timedatectl”, you can see the local time of your system , Universal time, Real-time clock time(RTC), the current time zone, the status of the NTP synchronized, and others.
CentOS 7 Changing the Current Date Using “timedatectl”
If you want to change the current date for your system, just using “timedatectl” command with set-time option, type:
timedatectl set-time <YYYY-MM-DD>
Specified the value for “YYYY-MM-DD” like the following format: 2019-12-08.
Example: changing the current date to Dec 08 2019, type:
timedatectl set-time 2019-12-08
CentOS 7 Changing the Current Time Using “timedatectl”
To change the current time for your Centos 7 system, you can run the following “timedatectl’ command with “set-time” option, type:
timdatectl set-time <HH:MM:SS>
Specified the value for “HH:MM:SS> like the following format: 10:24:34 (Hour:Minute:Second).
Example: changing the current time to 10:24:34, issue the below command:
timedatectl set-time 10:24:34
Outputs:
[root@devops Desktop]# date Mon Dec 8 21:28:29 EST 2014 [root@devops Desktop]# timedatectl set-time 10:24:34 [root@devops Desktop]# date Mon Dec 8 10:24:35 EST 2014
CentOS 7 Changing the TimeZone using “timedatectl” command
Before changing the time zone of system, you need to know all available time zones for your system, issue the following command:
timedatectl list-timezones
Outputs:
[root@devops Desktop]# timedatectl list-timezones Africa/Abidjan Africa/Accra Africa/Addis_Ababa Africa/Algiers Africa/Asmara Africa/Bamako Africa/Bangui Africa/Banjul Africa/Bissau Africa/Blantyre ......
Searching a timezone you want to select, you can use grep command with timedatectl list-timezones, such as, find all available Europe time zone supported by your system, type:
timedatectl list-timezones | grep Europe
Outputs:
[root@devops Desktop]# timedatectl list-timezones | grep Europe Europe/Amsterdam Europe/Andorra Europe/Athens Europe/Belgrade Europe/Berlin Europe/Bratislava Europe/Brussels Europe/Bucharest Europe/Budapest Europe/Busingen Europe/Chisinau Europe/Copenhagen ....
Now we can try to change the current time zone of your system, using the timedatectl command with the “set-timezone” command:
timedatectl set-timezone <timezone name>
Specified one time zone that you searched from the output of “list-timezones”, example, changing the time zone to “Europe/berlin”, type:
timedatectl set-timezone Eruope/berlin
Outputs:
[root@devops Desktop]# timedatectl | grep Timezone Timezone: America/New_York (EST, -0500) [root@devops Desktop]# timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Berlin [root@devops Desktop]# timedatectl | grep Timezone Timezone: Europe/Berlin (CET, +0100)