How to set date and time on AlmaLinux

The objective of this guide is to show how to set the system date and time on AlmaLinux. This can be done from both GUI and command line, so we’ll be covering both methods in the following instructions.

Setting your system date, time, and time zone is usually done when initially installing AlmaLinux or migrating from CentOS to AlmaLinux. If you skipped that step during installation, have switched time zones, or your system clock has drifted out of sync, we’ll help you get it fixed.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to set date and time on AlmaLinux from GNOME GUI
  • How to set date and time on AlmaLinux from command line
Setting the date and time on AlmaLinux

Setting the date and time on AlmaLinux

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System AlmaLinux
Software N/A
Other Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Set date and time via GUI



For these instructions, we’ll assume that you’re using the default GNOME GUI desktop environment in AlmaLinux. If you’re using some other environment, the screenshots below are going to look a little different. However, the steps should be very similar.

  1. Start by opening the activities menu and searching for “time”. Click the Date and Time settings menu that shows up.
  2. Open the date and time settings from activities menu

    Open the date and time settings from activities menu

  3. When the Date and Time settings menu opens up, we’ll need to unlock it with our root password before we can make any changes. Click the unlock button and specify your password.
  4. Unlock the settings with the root password

    Unlock the settings with the root password



  5. With the menu unlocked, there are several things we can do, depending on how you’d like to configure the system date and time. The system time and time zone can either be configured “automatically,” which means they’ll query official time servers for the correct data, or they can be configured manually to meet our own specifications. In order to access the options for manual configuration, first make sure that you’ve turned the automatic settings off.
  6. Select to turn automatic configuration for date and time on or off

    Select to turn automatic configuration for date and time on or off

  7. Click on the date and time to manually configure it.
  8. Change the date and time manually from GNOME

    Change the date and time manually from GNOME

  9. Similarly, you can also manually configure the time zone by clicking on it and searching for a nearby major city. Or, just click a location on the map.
  10. Search for a nearby major city that shares the same time zone

    Search for a nearby major city that shares the same time zone

That’s all there is to it. You can close the Date and Time settings menu after you’re satisfied with the changes.

Set date and time via command line

Setting AlmaLinux’s system date, time, and time zone can also be done from the command line, as we’ll see below.



  1. The first thing to decide is whether you want time synchronization on or off. If you plan to set the date and time manually, time synchronization will need to be turned off, otherwise your changes will be quickly overridden by the system. Turn time synchronization on or off, respectively, with the commands below.
    # timedatectl set-ntp on
    OR
    # timedatectl set-ntp off
    
  2. If you’d like to set the system clock to some arbitrary date and time, ensure that time synchronization is off (as we’ve shown above) and use the following date command. This command will set the date and time to 10 January 2021, 12:00 PM, but substitute any values you want.
    # date -s "10 JAN 2021 12:00:00"
    
  3. If you decide to keep time synchronization on, then you just need to configure the system’s time zone in order to have it automatically pull the correct data from a time server. Type the following command to see what time zone your system is currently configured for.
    $ timedatectl
                   Local time: Fri 2021-01-08 04:33:12 EST  
               Universal time: Fri 2021-01-08 09:33:12 UTC  
                     RTC time: Fri 2021-01-08 09:33:11      
                    Time zone: America/New_York (EST, -0500)
    System clock synchronized: no                           
                  NTP service: n/a                          
              RTC in local TZ: no
    
  4. List available time zones with the following command. Pick one relevant to your location, and we’ll configure your system to that time zone in the next step.
    $ timedatectl list-timezones
    

    Use the grep command to narrow down the search. In the example below this command will produce a list of all available time zones in Australia:

    $ timedatectl list-timezones | grep Australia
    Australia/Adelaide
    Australia/Brisbane
    Australia/Broken_Hill
    Australia/Currie
    Australia/Darwin
    Australia/Eucla
    Australia/Hobart
    Australia/Lindeman
    Australia/Lord_Howe
    Australia/Melbourne
    Australia/Perth
    Australia/Sydney
    


  5. Once you’ve picked the correct time zone from the list, use the following syntax to set your system’s time zone.
    # timedatectl set-timezone Australia/Sydney
    
  6. Confirm that the changes have been made with the timedatectl command.
    $ timedatectl
                   Local time: Sat 2021-01-09 14:15:11 AEDT  
               Universal time: Sat 2021-01-09 03:15:11 UTC   
                     RTC time: Fri 2021-01-08 09:46:05       
                    Time zone: Australia/Sydney (AEDT, +1100)
    System clock synchronized: no                            
                  NTP service: n/a                           
              RTC in local TZ: no
    

Closing Thoughts

In this guide, we saw how to set the system date, time, and time zone via GUI and command line on AlmaLinux. Not only can you synchronize your clock to any of the world’s time zones, but Linux also allows us to set arbitrary values if we want.