hey peeps, i was wondering how i could change the system time on a debian 3.0 r2 load without installing a separate package?

i've tried going through base-config, but switching the time to non-gmt still puts it off an hour (i figure its because of daylight savings).

i'm new to debian, but i've worked with many different linux distros over the past 3 years or so (#1 thing i noticed was no 'linuxconf' of course).

if anyone could let me know the command/config tool that i could use to change the date/time on my box, i'd appreciate it (and i repeat, i don't really wanna download anything that isn't core debian).

thanks!

Try the date command.

Hi,
The system clock can be changed with "date" as proposed, but I guess that you get the
wrong time after boot, and want to correct it, right? If you have configured the right
time-zone, the most likley cause is that you have the hwclock running at local time
(the usual windows setting) and Linux thinks it runs in UTC (in which case your location
would be 1 hour from GMT). If so, you can set the system clock from the hwclock with
> hwclock--hctosys --localtime
read the man page for more info. I don't know how Debian sets the time at boot, but
check the /etc/sysconfig/clock if it exists, hwclock is anyway a common Linux program and is
probably included in the distribution.

If you have the time-zone incorrect the "manual" way to set it is to make a link in /etc;
> cd /etc
> ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Stockholm localtime

Regards,
L Ekman

ahhh...thank you ekman. i've been spoiled with redhat as of late, so i haven't had to worry about all this.

thanks again!

Oh, if you want to change time zones then tzconfig will to that with a minimum of fuss. Be aware that windows XP (not sure about 2k NT and the rest) get their time off a remote server at boot time by default. If you find your time changing consistently by an hour every time you boot windows then disable that feature.