In this tutorial, we will show you how to change the timezone on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, By default, when a server is provisioned a default timezone will get configured automatically with the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). On CentOS, the system’s timezone is set during the installation, but it can be easily changed at a later time.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo
‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step setting of the correct timezone on a CentOS 8.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 8.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- A
non-root sudo user
or access to theroot user
. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user
, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Change Timezone on CentOS 8
Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.
sudo dnf update sudo dnf install epel-release
Step 2. Check Current Timezone.
To get detailed information on your CentOS server’s date, time, and timezone you use the timedatectl
command:
timedatectl
Output:
Local time: Sat 2021-04-21 21:44:22 UTC Universal time: Sat 2021-04-21 21:46:22 UTC RTC time: Sat 2021-04-21 21:30:33 Time zone: UTC (UTC, +0000) System clock synchronized: yes NTP service: active RTC in local TZ: no
Step 3. Set or Change Timezone on CentOS 8.
To list all available time zones, you can either list the files in the /usr/share/zoneinfo
the directory or use the timedatectl
a command like below:
timedatectl list-timezones | grep -i europe
Output:
... Europe/London Europe/Luxembourg Europe/Madrid .... Europe/Moscow Europe/Oslo Europe/Paris Europe/German Europe/Prague Europe/Riga Europe/Rome
Once you identify which time zone is accurate to your location, run the following command as sudo
user by indicating your time zone:
sudo timedatectl set-timezone Europe/German
After that, run the timedatectl
command to verify the changes:
timedatectl
Output:
Local time: Sat 2021-04-21 22:44:22 UTC Universal time: Sat 2021-04-21 22:46:22 UTC RTC time: Sat 2021-04-21 22:30:33 Time zone: Europe/German (EDT, -0400) System clock synchronized: yes NTP service: active RTC in local TZ: no
Congratulations! You have successfully changed the timezone. Thanks for using this tutorial set or changing the timezone on your CentOS 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official CentOS website.