Changing ESX Timezone

Following a request on a previous post, I have written this post about how to change the timezone of an ESX host from the command line.

* – None of the below requires an ESX host reboot.

Check the current timezone using the following command:

cat /etc/sysconfig/clock

This will produce output something like this:

ZONE=”/GMT”
UTC=true
ARC=false

Given that I live in Manchester, England I would want to change to the setting that will automatically compensate for Daylight saving etc you need to set it to /Eurpoe/London. This setting will automatically change to the daylight saving when using NTP.

So to change simply cd the zoneinfo folder using this command:

cd /usr/share/zoneinfo

For the London setting you will have to cd to the Europe folder below the zoneinfo folder:

cd /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe

Execute an ls, just to check that your desired timezone is there.

Now if you are still in the correct folder (/usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe) simply overwrite the existing timezone file with the correct one, as below:

cp /London /etc/localtime

Or if in any other folder:

cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London /etc/localtime

When prompted to overwrite answer yes.

Now check that the file overwrite was successful using a diff:

diff /etc/localtime /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London