How to set the timezone on Ubuntu Server

You can check your current timezone by just running

$ date
Mon Sep 3 18:03:04 WEST 2012

Or checking the timezone file with:

$ cat /etc/timezone
Europe/Lisbon

So to change it just run

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
And follow on screen instructions. Easy.

Also be sure to restart cron as it won’t pick up the timezone change and will still be running on UTC.

$ /etc/init.d/cron stop
$ /etc/init.d/cron start

you might also want to install ntp to keep the correct time:

aptitude install ntp