How to Configure the Time Zone on CentOS

centos-how-to-configure-time-zone.md

CentOS - Configure Time Zone

System TimeZone

Setup a default ZONE environment variable.

Export the required local time zone value using the ZONE environment variable.

Skip this step if setting up a system with the default UTC time zone.

# export ZONE="Europe/London"

Set the system timezone

CentOS-6

# sed -i \
  -e "s~^\(ZONE=\).*$~\1${ZONE:-UTC}~" \
  /etc/sysconfig/clock \
&& ln -sf \
  /usr/share/zoneinfo/${ZONE:-UTC} \
  /etc/localtime

CentOS-7

# timedatectl set-timezone ${ZONE:-UTC}

PHP TimeZone

If PHP is installed it is necessary to set a valid default time zone.

# sed -r -i \
  -e "s~^;?(date.timezone[ ]+=).*$~\1 ${ZONE:-UTC}~" \
  /etc/php.ini

Restart services

Services will need reloading for the time zone changes to be picked up. Either restart the server or the applicable services - for example, if you have a running a MySQL or PHP Apache server you will need to reload the configuration to pick up the changes.