Problem:

How to set date and time in Ubuntu LTS 10.04



Solution:


How to set Date and Time in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx via command line.

You can use the “date’ command for setting Date in any ubuntu bases distributions.

It is better to take a peek into the man pages of the ‘data’ command via:

                  # man date

The man page of date command in Ubuntu might be a bit confusing for all. Let me explain the process to you!!!

Type in the following command, replacing:

                  nn with two digit month (e.g. 01, 05, 12),
                  dd with two digit day (e.g. 02, 24, 31),
                  hh with two digit hour in 24 hour clock format ( 00, 03, 23),
                  yy/yyyy with the year in two digit or four digit (optional),
and after a period symbol (.) ss with two digit second (00, 05, 59).

The syntax of the date command is:

            # date nnddhhmmyyyy.ss
or
            # date nnddhhmmyy.ss :- in two digit year format
or      
            # date nnddhhmm :- With minimum required parameters (without year and second)
or        
            # date nnddhhmm.ss :- Without year

Month from 01 to 12 (nn)
Day from 01 to 30/31 (dd)
Hour from 00 to 23 (hh)
Minute from 00 to 59 (mm)
Year in four or two digit format (yy yyyy)
Seconds after the period (.) symbol from 00 to 59 (ss)


Example for specifying 21st september, 2010 6:54:20 PM, you should type in the command

             # date 092118542010.20

To specify set NTP server for automatic time synchronyzation:

            # sudo ntpdate NTP-SERVER_URL_OR_IP

I guess I made it faily simple for updating date and time in Ubuntu Server / Desktop LTS 10.04. Also you can try this command in any of the linux based distributions such as RedHat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, Fedora etc.