In this article, I will explain how to check timezone in Linux using 4 Easy Methods. System time is usually defined by timezone. You might be aware that entire globe is divided into multiple timezones which determines its local time. You can see the use of same timezone in your System for various purposes. Timezone concept is more important when we are talking about a Cluster setup who’s nodes are basically lies on two different geographical region. It is important to sync the timezone between the nodes to form a Cluster. Hence I will try to explain different methods through examples using which one can check the timezone in their Linux Based Systems.

How to Check timezone in Linux

Also Read: 10 Popular Linux date command examples(How to set date and time in Linux)

Method 1: Check timezone in Linux using timedatectl command

You can check timezone in Linux by simply running timedatectl command and checking the time zone section of the output as shown below.

[root@localhost ~]# timedatectl
Local time: Mon 2020-05-18 00:34:31 EDT
Universal time: Mon 2020-05-18 04:34:31 UTC
RTC time: Sat 2020-05-16 12:01:40
Time zone: America/New_York (EDT, -0400)
NTP enabled: yes
NTP synchronized: no
RTC in local TZ: no
DST active: yes
Last DST change: DST began at
Sun 2020-03-08 01:59:59 EST
Sun 2020-03-08 03:00:00 EDT
Next DST change: DST ends (the clock jumps one hour backwards) at
Sun 2020-11-01 01:59:59 EDT
Sun 2020-11-01 01:00:00 EST

Instead of checking the entire output you can also just grep the zone keyword from timedatectl command output and get the timezone as shown below.

[root@localhost ~]# timedatectl | grep -i zone
Time zone: America/New_York (EDT, -0400)

You can also check the list of timezones using timedatectl list-timezones command as shown in below output.

[root@localhost ~]# timedatectl list-timezones
Africa/Abidjan
Africa/Accra
Africa/Addis_Ababa
Africa/Algiers
Africa/Asmara
Africa/Bamako
Africa/Bangui
Africa/Banjul
Africa/Bissau
Africa/Blantyre
Africa/Brazzaville
Africa/Bujumbura
Africa/Cairo
Africa/Casablanca
Africa/Ceuta
Africa/Conakry
Africa/Dakar
Africa/Dar_es_Salaam
Africa/Djibouti
Africa/Douala
Africa/El_Aaiun
Africa/Freetown
Africa/Gaborone
Africa/Harare
Africa/Johannesburg
Africa/Juba
Africa/Kampala
Africa/Khartoum
Africa/Kigali
Africa/Kinshasa
Africa/Lagos
Africa/Libreville
Africa/Lome
Africa/Luanda
Africa/Lubumbashi
Africa/Lusaka
Africa/Malabo
Africa/Maputo
Africa/Maseru
Africa/Mbabane
Africa/Mogadishu
Africa/Monrovia

Method 2: Check timezone in Linux using date command

You can also check the timezone by simply running date command as shown below.

[root@localhost ~]# date
Mon May 18 00:42:20 EDT 2020

In the above output you can see current date and time but if you are interested only in checking the timezone then you can use date "+%Z" command as shown below.

[root@localhost ~]# date "+%Z"
EDT

You can also check the timezone in numeric form by using below date command.

[root@localhost ~]# date "+%z%Z"
-0400EDT

Method 3: Check timezone from /etc/timezone File(On Ubuntu/Debian Based Systems)

In Ubuntu based Systems, you can check the timezone from /etc/timezone file as shown below. As you can from below output, current timezone is set to Asia/Kolkata.

root@localhost:~# cat /etc/timezone
Asia/Kolkata

Method 4: Check timezone using Geolocation

You can use curl command to check the timezone using Geolocation as shown below. Please note that running below command command would require an active internet connection in your server.

[root@localhost ~]# curl https://ipapi.co/timezone;echo
Asia/Kolkata

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