Changing Server Timezone On Ubuntu

This is another one of those “I know this, but I can never remember how” type things.

I’m currently reconfiguring a machine on the other side of the globe, so I want to get it to work to IST instead of EST.

A quick google brought up a rather complex way of doing it which sounded really wrong to me, so I refined my query and found the sane solution in the Ubuntu documentation.

Simply run the following command as root (or using “su”):
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

And just follow the instructions.

No silly reboots or other craziness required.

To keep your server's time in sync with the rest of civilisation setup a cronjob to poll an ntp server once every 24 hours:
 /usr/sbin/ntpdate yourfavouritentpserveraddress

Problem solved 🙂

By Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and CEO of Irish hosting provider and domain name registrar Blacknight.

4 comments

  1. “To keep your server’s time in sync with the rest of civilisation setup a cronjob to poll an ntp server once every 24 hours:”
    The Tardis hurt Trinity hard in that we had to push those requests off into /null
    Have a look at
    /etc/ntp.conf
    Ubuntu knows about this …you are not the 1st.
    http://www.pool.ntp.org/
    Take your pick

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