How to change time-zone settings from the command line

Question

I have a virtual machine that is set to PST that a couple of colleagues have in different timezones. If I wanted to change the time-zone to EST and GMT, what do I need to do?

Answer 1

Execute the following command:

 sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Answer 2

As root you have to execute:

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Answer 3

To run one program with a different time zone setting, set the TZ environment variable, e.g. run TZ=Pacific/Kiritimati date to see what time it is on Christmas Island, or export TZ=Pacific/Kiritimati to have the setting last for a shell session.