Set timezone in Ubuntu

May 15, 2021 Tech timezone ubuntu

At some point, Ubuntu changed how you set the time zone from the command line.

The new way involves the command timedatectl

Check the current time/date/timezone:

timedatectl
               Local time: Fri 2021-06-04 18:19:45 UTC
           Universal time: Fri 2021-06-04 18:19:45 UTC
                 RTC time: Fri 2021-06-04 18:19:45
                Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no

If the NTP service from the above command show inactive, enable NTP:

timedatectl set-ntp yes
==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.timedate1.set-ntp ===
Authentication is required to control whether network time synchronization shall be enabled.
Authenticating as: tom
Password:
==== AUTHENTICATION COMPLETE ===

Find the time zone, but narrow it down since I'm near Denver:

timedatectl list-timezones | grep Denver
America/Denver

Now set the time zone:

sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Denver

Note that no output is expected from the above command, unless there is a problem.