How to change date/time in Ubuntu?

Linux always have two types of clocks, which are Hardware Clock and System Clock. Hardware Clock, also known as CMOS Clock or Real-time Clock (RTC). System Clock is the software clock used by Linux.

When the system boots up, it would get the time/date from Hardware Clock and set it to System Software Clock. This System Clock may not often accurate, and will experience some clock slipping especially high hardware resources during too many processes running. There’re only two ways to ensure the clock is accurate according NTP, either reboot your system or perform manual synchronization.

To check your current date & time

root:/home# date
Tue Apr 20 07:45:44 PDT 2010

To change the system software clock manually

root:/home# date 042022462010.00
Tue Apr 20 22:46:00 PDT 2010

Format : date <MMDDHHmmYYYY.ss>

To ensure if your system time zone is configured correctly

( Only perform these steps if time/date is NOT CRITICAL on your system, else skip this step )

root:/home# /etc/network/if-up.d /ntpdate
root:/home#  date
Tue Apr 20 07:50:41 PDT 2010

It seems like the time zone is not configured properly, change your folder to /usr/share/zoneinfo and select the most appropriate region in the following steps

To change the system time zone

root:/home# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kuala_Lumpur /etc/localtime

To perform synchronization to NTP using rdate

The time server can be any public NTP server that comply to RFC868

root:/home# /usr/bin/rdate -s time-a.nist.gov

To set your hardware clock time and verify

root:/home# /sbin/hwclock --show
Tue 20 Apr 2010 03:59:03 PM MYT  -0.987237 seconds
root:/home# /sbin/hwclock --systohc
root:/home# /sbin/hwclock --show
Tue 20 Apr 2010 10:58:26 PM MYT  -0.782410 seconds
root:/home# /etc/network/if-up.d /ntpdate

Refers : Man Page for hwclock

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