How to change ubuntu's server date and time via command line?

Question

The Ubuntu server's current date and time is different from the time zone date and time. I have tried using:

sudo date "30 Sep 2015 4:43:42"

to change it but it did not change the date and time, just printed on terminal the date and time I changed, but when I executed:

sudo hwclock --show

The date and time is still the old one.

What is the correct way to change date and time of Ubuntu Server?

Answer 1

You can set the system date with this command:

sudo date --set="2015-09-30 10:05:59.990"

Then when using date, it should be showed correctly.

Now you should also the set hardware clock in the BIOS of the system, that the setting persists over a reboot (dureing the startup the system time is set to the value of the hardware clock). Do that with hwclock:

sudo hwclock --systohc

This gets the system clocks (sys) value and sets the hardware clock (hc). Check it with the hwclock command. Both hwclock and date should now show the same date and time.

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To set your timezone, you can use this command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

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BTW: If you use a this machine as a server, I strongly recommend using an NTP-Client to sync the time over network. So you can guarantee that all your servers have the exactly same time set. This will sync the time while the machine runs. If you have applications which are dependent of synced time over server, I recommend the NTP-Daemon. The longer it runs in the background, the more precise is the time.

Answer 2

1. Search for your timezone

timedatectl list-timezones

2. Set your timezone

sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Toronto

3. Enable timesyncd

sudo timedatectl set-ntp on

With this, time should be set and synchronized.

You can see more on this tutorial : https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-time-synchronization-on-ubuntu-18-04

Answer 3

I dislike setting system time manually. So to fix this issue I had to combine two different answers.
To fix system time you have to use this code:

sudo date -s "$(wget -qSO- --max-redirect=0 google.com 2>&1 | grep Date: | cut -d' ' -f5-8)Z"

as given in this answer
Then you sync the hardware clock with system clock using

sudo hwclock --systohc

as given by @chaos in this thread.

Answer 4

Me helped:

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1 - step (preparation)

 timedatectl set-local-rtc 0
 sudo timedatectl set-ntp 1
 sudo hwclock --systohc
 sudo timedatectl set-ntp 0

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2 - step (set datetime)

sudo timedatectl set-time "06:24:00"
sudo timedatectl set-time "2020-04-23"
sudo hwclock --systohc

or

sudo date --set="2020-04-23 06:24:25.990"
sudo hwclock --systohc

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3 - step (check datetime)

timedatectl

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Answer 5

I'm using Ubuntu-based servers on Amazon AWS. All of the SUDO DATE answers DID NOT WORK for me. SUDO DATE returned the new date as the output, but subsequent DATE invocations still shows the old date. Also, HWCLOCK did nothing but return an error.

The answer for me was:

sudo timedatectl set-ntp false

sudo timedatectl set-time "date-time-string"

Answer 6

just type in

sudo date newdatestring

with newdatestring in the format nnddhhmmyyyy.ss

• nn: the (two digit) month (01 to 12)
• dd: the (two digit) day (01 to 31), with the regular rules for days according to month and year applying
• hh: the (two digit) hour (00 to 23)
• mm: the (two digit) minute (00 to 59)
• yyyy: the year; it can be two digit or four digit
• ss is two digit seconds (00 to 59). Notice the period ‘.’ before the ss.

But beside the date command, maybe you prefer the NTP "solution" (network time protocol): Serverguide - NTP, much easier to handle and more precise than setting the date by hand. You can use a cronjob or the ntp daemon (ntpd) to update you time every x hours/minutes...

Hope this helps!

Answer 7

For those looking for the epoch seconds version

1. Set the current date and time

   sudo date -s @1565864862
   

2. Get the current date and time

   date +%s
   

   outputs 1565864862