Set the timezone on Debian 5 Lenny

Posted December 30th, 2010 in Linux/Unix/BSD

I'm always forgetting how to set the timezone on a Debian 5 Lenny server when I set up a new one so this quick post is for future reference...

Set the timezone in Debian 5 Lenny

Run the following as root or using sudo:

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Then simply follow the prompts to select your timezone. Once it's done the new timezone, local time and UTC times are shown as in the following example:

Current default timezone: 'Pacific/Auckland'
Local time is now:      Thu Dec 30 10:26:51 NZDT 2010.
Universal Time is now:  Wed Dec 29 21:26:51 UTC 2010.