Manually Change Time Zone - RedHat

Overview

These steps will allow you to manually change the time zone on an incorrectly configured Red Hat server

Resolution/Topic

Available Time Zones

All time zones available on your RHEL system can be found in /usr/share/zoneinfo. Change to that directory, and browse through the directory structure to find the particular time zone you need.

Manually Change Time Zone

With your favorite text editor, open /etc/sysconfig/clock and change ZONE= to the particular time zone you need.

For example, to set your system to the Pacific Time Zone, set ZONE= to the following:

ZONE="America/Los_Angeles"

The syntax follows the directory structure in /usr/share/zoneinfo. America/Los_Angeles is located at absolute path /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles.

Once you have edited /etc/sysconfig/clock, create symlink localtime that points to the particular time zone file:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime

Finally, for the changes to take effect, restart any applications that use the time zone setting in /etc/sysconfig/clock, or simply restart the system to ensure every application is aware of the change.