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Have a good idea for an article? Something you want to know? Suggest an idea for an article and we just might write one for you.Setting Debian Etch time and timezone
You can set your server time manually by typing
date 081517112007
this sets your time to 15th of August 17:11, year 2007.
But we recommend that one sets up the server to check automatically time from NTP servers.
Using NTP
Automatic time checking and adjusting can be accomplished with NTP (Network Time Protocol). NTP is used to synchronize the computer clock over net.
This is how you set NTP in Debian:
apt-get install ntp
apt-get install ntpdate
If everything goes right NTP service should start automatically after apt-get install command.
You can see if you are running NTP client by typing command:
ntpq -p
This command runs NTP query and option -p tells to print the list of servers that are named in /etc/ntp.conf (and also diplays their status).
Setting timezone
Set your timezone with command:
tzconfig
Follow up by choosing the right answers to questions that command line “wizard” is asking.
Finally check the changes with command:
date
I had answer:
Wed Aug 15 17:06:53 EEST 2007
And I was pleased with that answer, since my server is in Finland (EEST) and time and date was exactly right.







In Ubuntu this was needed to get ntpd server going:
sudo apt-get install ntp-simple
Ari Pietarinen · Jan 13, 10:11 PM
Awesome. Thank You. This worked in Debian 4.0 Etch and fixed Orage and Clock applets that weren’t changing timezones before.
Russell Endicott · Feb 25, 12:27 AM