How To Change Timezone on a CentOS 6 and 7

I set my time zone to 'America/New_York' on a CentOS Linux 7 server. I want to see date and time in my timezone in log files. How can I change the current timezone from 'America/New_York' to 'America/Chicago' using command line?

You can easily change timezone in CentOS Linux using the following methods.

CentOS timezone config files and directories

1. /usr/share/zoneinfo/ - The system timezone directory contains the files as per timezone name. For example, the file/usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_Yorkrepresents time zone for New York.
2. /etc/localtime - It is a symlink to the file localtime or to the correct timezone file in the system located in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ directory.

How do I see the current time zone?

Type the date command or the ls command:
$ date
$ ls -l /etc/localtime
Sample outputs:

Fig.01: Finding current timezone on a CentOS Linux

Change the current timezone in CentOS 7

To find list of all available time zones, run:
# timedatectl list-timezones
##*** Grep possible Asian timezones ***##
# timedatectl list-timezones | grep Asia
Sample outputs:

Africa/Abidjan
Africa/Accra
Africa/Addis_Ababa
Africa/Algiers
Africa/Asmara
Africa/Bamako
Africa/Bangui
Africa/Banjul
....
..
America/Dawson
America/Dawson_Creek
America/Denver
America/Detroit
America/Dominica
America/Edmonton
America/Eirunepe
America/El_Salvador
America/Fortaleza
America/Glace_Bay
....
..
Pacific/Saipan
Pacific/Tahiti
Pacific/Tarawa
Pacific/Tongatapu
Pacific/Wake
Pacific/Wallis

The syntax is as follows to set timezone and need to run as root user:

# timedatectl set-timezone time_zone

In this example, set timezone to America/Chicago

# timedatectl set-timezone America/Chicago

Verify new settings by typing the following two commands:
# date
# ls -l /etc/localtime
Sample outputs:

Fig.02: Change the currently used time zone

Change the current timezone in CentOS 6 and older

Type the following commands as root:

 
cp /etc/localtime /root/old.timezone
rm /etc/localtime
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Chicago /etc/localtime
 

Verify new settings by typing the following two commands:

 
date
ls -l /etc/localtime