Setting time, date, NTP, and timezone details on Debian
Posted on 2016-07-21 (Updated on 2016-07-21)
Setting date and time options on Debian has been placed under the systemd umbrella with the "timedatectl" utility. While I'm not fully convinced that everything belongs in systemd, I do think that having a single location for all time and date related configurations makes sense.
Set system date and time
You can use the set-time command with timedatectl to set either the time, date, or both simultaneously. Because it is a system-wide setting, this command does need to be run with root privileges.
# Sets the system time (hours, minutes, seconds)
# note: time and date values may need to be quoted
timedatectl set-time [hh:mm:ss]
# Set the system date
timedatectl set-time [yyyy-mm-dd]
# Set both time and date
timedatectl set-time [yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss]
Set NTP synchronization
Since it's always good to keep synced up with the rest of the world, turning on NTP is a great idea. My Debian machine DID NOT do synchronization automatically, so this is a good option to set.
# Enable NTP (switch to "false" to disable, if that's how you roll)
timedatectl set-ntp true
Enabling this option did not request any pool information, or have any changeable settings that I could see, so they may be configured elsewhere. I'll update this post if I find any additional information.
Set timezones
There are two commands for setting timezones; one that lists the available options, and one that sets the desired timezone.
# List the available timezone values that you can use
timedatectl list-timezones
# Set the timezone (I used "America/New_York" to switch to Eastern US time )
timedatectl set-timezone [timezone]
My window manager (i3) did not pick up the timezone settings immediately when I changed. You may need to restart your WM/session for them to pick up, or make sure that you haven't manually specified one in your bash profile/config ( export TZ=America/Los_Angeles, for example ).