CentOS 5 VPS - setting the date and time

Question

I've just tried to set the timezone on my VPS to Europe/London:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime

This was fine. However, the time is now wildly out:

$ date
Sat Feb  5 12:33:21 GMT 2011

When it is in fact 22:31.

With it being a VPS, trying to do

$ date -s 22:31

also fails.

Is this something I can fix, or do I need my host to do something?

Thanks.

Rikih · Answer 1 · 2011-02-06 01:40:43Z

up vote 1 down vote

if using xen, try

echo 1 > /proc/sys/xen/independent_wallclock

and set date time again

answered Feb 6 '11 at 1:40

Rikih
78024

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ewwhite · Answer 2 · 2011-02-05 22:36:22Z

up vote 0 down vote

Can you try this from the date man page?

   date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

So, for 22:31, you'd type date 02052231.

or the full string containing century, year and seconds...

date 020522312011.00

answered Feb 5 '11 at 22:36

ewwhite
25.8k22681

	# date 02052237 date: cannot set date: Operation not permitted. I think it's due to the server being a VPS. – Dan Feb 5 '11 at 22:38
	Do you have access to an `ntpdate` command? Perhaps `ntpdate time.apple.com` – ewwhite Feb 5 '11 at 22:39
	No ntpdate, but I suspect the result would be the same as using date. rdate certainly doesn't work (same error as above). – Dan Feb 5 '11 at 22:53

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malfy · Answer 3 · 2011-02-05 22:36:39Z

up vote 0 down vote

Use:

/bin/rm /etc/localtime
/bin/ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime

See this for more info. Only works on RH systems I believe.

answered Feb 5 '11 at 22:36

malfy
567117

	I did this to set the timezone, and it's done that fine (at least, the time is reported as being GMT) -- but the time itself is wrong. Thanks. – Dan Feb 5 '11 at 22:43
	Hmmm, how odd. Should change the time in all applications. – malfy Feb 5 '11 at 22:48

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3 Answers