How to Set Time, Timezone and Synchronize System Clock Using timedatectl Command

The timedatectl utility is distributed as part of the systemd system and service manager and allows you to review and change the configuration of the system clock. You can use this tool to change the current date and time, set the time zone, or enable automatic synchronization of the system clock with a remote server.

1. To display the current time and date on your system, use timedatectl command from the command line as follows:

~]$ timedatectl

Local time: Mon 2016-09-16 19:30:24 CEST

Universal time: Mon 2016-09-16 17:30:24 UTC

Timezone: Europe/Prague (CEST, +0200)

NTP enabled: no

NTP synchronized: no

RTC in local TZ: no

2. To view all available time zones, run the command below:

timedatectl list-timezones

3. To set your local timezone in Linux, we will use set-timezone switch as shown below.

# timedatectl set-timezone “Asia/Kolkata”

4. To set the date and time on your system, using the timedatectl command as follows:

# timedatectl set-time 15:58:30

5.To set date only, we can use set-time switch along the format of date in YY:MM:DD (Year, Month, Day).

# timedatectl set-time 2018-11-20

6. To set both date and time:

# timedatectl set-time '2018-11-20 16:14:50'

7. To start automatic time synchronization with remote NTP server, type the following command at the terminal.

# timedatectl set-ntp yes

8. To disable NTP time synchronization, type the following command at the terminal.

# timedatectl set-ntp no

RHEL Tutor