How can I display the current time & date setting?

Question

How can I display the current time configuration, like the time zone, in Ubuntu?

Answer 1

I don't know of a single file, but this may give you the info needed:

cat /etc/timezone
grep UTC /etc/default/rcS
date
# hardware clock
sudo hwclock --show

Answer 2

Best example (IMHO) using timedatectl (in command-line/terminal):

$ timedatectl
      Local time: Thu 2014-07-24 19:51:23 IST
  Universal time: Thu 2014-07-24 14:21:23 UTC
        Timezone: Asia/Kolkata (IST, +0530)
     NTP enabled: no
NTP synchronized: no
 RTC in local TZ: no
      DST active: n/a

Visit the manpage for more settings and further information.

Answer 3

For me, date works:

Fri 22 Nov 2019 04:31:50 PM UTC

Answer 4

Check out info date, and for example date +'%z'

Answer 5

For the time zone, you can use geolocation:

$ curl https://ipapi.co/timezone
America/Chicago

Or:

$ curl http://ip-api.com/line?fields=timezone
America/Chicago

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/time#Time_zone

Answer 6

If you need a formatted area and time zone, you can use:

$ grep `date +%Z` /etc/timezone 
  Etc/UTC

Answer 7

If you have PowerShell installed:

PS> Get-TimeZone

Id                         : Europe/Vilnius
DisplayName                : (UTC+02:00) Eastern European Standard Time
StandardName               : Eastern European Standard Time
DaylightName               : Eastern European Summer Time
BaseUtcOffset              : 02:00:00
SupportsDaylightSavingTime : True

I suspect this won't be popular answer in a Linux community, but I really like the verb-noun convention. It makes it easier for me to remember commands, and it will also work on all distributions with PowerShell installed :)

Documentation for the Get-TimeZone cmdlet