A friend needed help changing the system date on his Linux box today. This is usually a simple task for Linux users but newbies tend to get confused by the "date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]” line in the man page.

To simplify, this is how you do it.

Set the current date to April 7 2008 8:42:45pm.

The easy way,

#date -s "7 April 2008 20:42:45"

The harder way,

#date 040720422008.45

The break down: MM DD hh mm YYYY ss

MM = month = 04

DD = day = 07

hh = hour = 20

mm = minute = 42

YYYY = year = 2008

ss = second = 450

sample output,

[root@klmsyslog01p ~]# date -s “7 April 2008 20:42:45″
Mon Apr 7 20:42:45 MYT 2008
[root@klmsyslog01p ~]#

[root@kmmserver01p ~]# date 040720422008.45
Mon Apr 7 20:42:45 MYT 2008
[root@kmmserver01p ~]#

Tags: command line, date, HowTo, Linux, linux commands, system administrators

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