How To Set or Change Timezone on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

This tutorial demonstrates how to set or change the timezone on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS from the command line. Although, those instructions can be applied also on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Prerequisites

You’ll need to be logged in as a user with sudo privileges in order to change the system’s timezone.

Checking the Current Timezone

– In Ubuntu and most other Linux distributions we can use the timedatectl command to display and set the current system’s time and timezone.

$ timedatectl
Local time: Sat 2020-05-02 18:23:34 EDT
  Universal time: Sat 2020-05-02 22:23:34 UTC
        RTC time: Sat 2020-05-02 22:23:34
       Time zone: America/Toronto (EDT, -0400)
     NTP enabled: yes
NTP synchronized: no
 RTC in local TZ: no
      DST active: yes
 Last DST change: DST began at
                  Sun 2020-03-08 01:59:59 EST
                  Sun 2020-03-08 03:00:00 EDT
 Next DST change: DST ends (the clock jumps one hour backwards) at
                  Sun 2020-11-01 01:59:59 EDT
                  Sun 2020-11-01 01:00:00 EST

– Alternatively, you can also check the current system’s timezone by displaying the contents of the /etc/timezone file.

$ cat /etc/timezone
Etc/UTC

Method 1./ Changing the Timezone Using the timedatectl Command

01- To list all available time zones, you can either list the files in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory or use the timedatectl command like below:

$ timedatectl list-timezones | grep -i europe
...
Europe/London
Europe/Luxembourg
Europe/Madrid
....
Europe/Moscow
Europe/Oslo
Europe/Paris
Europe/Podgorica
Europe/Prague
Europe/Riga
Europe/Rome

02- Once you identify which time zone is accurate to your location, run the following command as sudo user by indicating the your time zone:

$ sudo timedatectl set-timezone your_time_zone

– In this example, we will change the system’s timezone to Europe/Rome like below:

$ sudo timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Rome

03- Run the timedatectl command to verify the changes:

$ timedatectl
      Local time: Sun 2020-05-03 00:24:19 CEST
  Universal time: Sat 2020-05-02 22:24:19 UTC
        RTC time: Sat 2020-05-02 22:24:18
       Time zone: Europe/Rome (CEST, +0200)
     NTP enabled: yes
NTP synchronized: no
 RTC in local TZ: no
      DST active: yes
 Last DST change: DST began at
                  Sun 2020-03-29 01:59:59 CET
                  Sun 2020-03-29 03:00:00 CEST
 Next DST change: DST ends (the clock jumps one hour backwards) at
                  Sun 2020-10-25 02:59:59 CEST
                  Sun 2020-10-25 02:00:00 CET

Method 2./ Changing the Timezone by Creating a Symlink

You can change the timezone by symlinking /etc/localtime to the timezone file in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.
01- Identify the timezone you want to configure and create a symlink:

$ sudo ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Rome /etc/localtime

02- Verify the changes either by listing the /etc/localtime file or issuing the timedatectl or date commands:

$ date
Sun  3 May 00:18:57 CEST 2020

Conclusion

Your successfully set up or change the timezone on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS from the command line. You might want to check the following guides:

• How to Install Git on Ubuntu 20.04
• How to Install Java on Ubuntu 20.04

We hope this tutorial was enough Helpful. If you need more information, or have any questions, just comment below and we will be glad to assist you!

If you like our content, please consider buying us a coffee. Thank you for your support!