Linux – Weird CentOS server behavior time zones

centos6linuxtimezone

I have purchased a CentOS 6.8 dedicated server to migrate from shared hosting, and I'm having trouble with the time zones not displaying properly.

I have changed the php.ini time zone to Europe/Dublin – it didn't work

I have changed the httpd.conf timezone to Europe/Dublin – it didn't work

And I am trying to change the actual CentOS timezone and this is where it gets weird. I changed time zone to Europe/Dublin from CST (which was the default), and it seems to think that Europe/Dublin is GMT+14.

Please see the image link below. The second date should have said Sat Jan 7 07:48:11 GMT 2017.

Weird server time zone situation

Best Answer

The CST time zone is GMT -6, so if CST time is 15:47 then GMT time is 21:47.

If you are saying that at the time you took the screenshot the time was supposed to be 07:48 in the morning, then your server time is not correct, and you need to synchronise it.

Run this command to synchronise the time to correct one:

ntpdate -s time.nist.gov

It is possible you don't have ntp installed at all on your server, in which case you need to install it with:

yum install ntp ntpdate ntp-doc

And start the NTP service to keep the time synchronised with:

/etc/init.d/ntpd start

Also make sure to set the NTP service to autostart on boot with:

chkconfig ntpd on

Related Solutions

Linux – unix timestamp wrong time with rrdtools

That's odd. On my Ubuntu Linux system I get unix time in CET when I enter date +%s.

Could you show us the output of date +%s%Z? And could you cat /etc/timezone?

Linux – time / timezone of Linux VM on Hyper-V

Windows (and Hyper-V by extension) keep the "CMOS Clock" (even on VMs) in local time, not UTC. Most *nix platforms keep it in UTC then display it in local time.

By default Hyper-V will set the clock of the VM, which in this case will set the VMs clock to your local time (EST/EDT). The *nix VM will need to be set to recognize this, as it's not the default (usually).

Alternately, you can disable Hyper-V's time sync, and have the *nix client sync it's own clock via NTP or similar. This will lead to occasional clock irregularities because the VM's clock isn't an independent piece of hardware, it's software running on the host (and isn't perfect; this isn't a problem unless your application requires a high precision clock).

Edit:
I don't know Linux, got this from someone else: For CentOS edit /etc/sysconfig/clock to include these lines:

UTC=false
ZONE="America/New York"

There may be other lines in the file, not sure what they should be. Enable Hyper-V's Time Sync, and the VM should have the correct time (as long as the host does).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – unix timestamp wrong time with rrdtools

Linux – time / timezone of Linux VM on Hyper-V

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