Table of Contents

Introduction

Setting your server's clock and timezone properly is essential in ensuring the healthy operation of distributed systems and maintaining accurate log timestamps. This tutorial will show you how to configure NTP time synchronization and set the timezone on an Ubuntu 14.04 server.

A more detailed version of this tutorial, with better explanations of each step, can be found progressiverobot.com.

Step 1: List available timezones

timezone illustration for: Step 1: List available timezones 
				
					
timedatectl list-timezones
  • Press Space to scroll to the next page, b to scroll back a page.
  • Once you find the timezone you want to use, press q to go back to the command line.

Step 2: Set the desired timezone

Be sure to replace <^>desired_timezone<^> with the timezone you selected from the list:

				
					
sudo timedatectl set-timezone &lt;^&gt;desired_timezone&lt;^&gt;

For example, to set the timezone to New York use this command:

				
					
sudo timedatectl set-timezone &lt;^&gt;America/New_York&lt;^&gt;

Step 3: Verify that the timezone has been set properly

				
					
timedatectl

				
			
				
					
[secondary_label Example output:]

      Local time: Fri 2016-03-25 12:00:43 EDT

  Universal time: Fri 2016-03-25 16:00:43 UTC

        Timezone: America/New_York (EDT, -0400)

. . .

Step 4: Install NTP

				
					
sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ntp

Once the NTP package installation is completed, your server will have NTP synchronization enabled!

Related Tutorials

Here is a link to a more detailed tutorial that is related to this guide: