How to Reset KDE desktop time zone
 

I have an odd problem. Somehow, the clock on my KDE desktop switched itself to UTC and the clock time is 4 hours ahead of my actual EDT time. If I open a shell, the time correctly shows EDT. If I go to System Settings > Date & Time > Time Zone, it also correctly shows EDT and the correct time. Where is the KDE launcher panel getting UTC?

More importantly, how can I "fix" that without either rebooting or restarting the KDE desktop? I have lots of windows open and am working on and I really don't want to save and close everything to either reboot or restart KDE.

KDE 4.14.32, Slackware64 14.2, kernel 4.4.182

Suggestions?

First I would check files:

/etc/localtime
/etc/localtime-copied-from
/etc/hardwareclock

and if necessary adjust it to the correct file under
/usr/share/zoneinfo/
and ensure /etc/hardwareclock is correct

As root you can probably execute this to fix:
/usr/sbin/timeconfig
if necessary.

Then you may need to reset/set the KDE clock

delete text, hardware clock setting is /etc/hardwareclock of all things :)



John

Use the right mouse button to click the clock.
Choose "Digital Clock Settings"
Next choose "Time Zones"
At the bottom you can choose "Clock Defaults to" either Local or UTC

Linux defaults to UTC. To show local time, you can use the command tzselect to select your time zone. You will likely have to run the command as root.

all: all of the /etc/local*, etc. files correctly show the timezone:
The fix was Gordie's suggestion. Interestingly, in the "Time Zones" setting, it did already have "Clock defaults to Local", although the "Area" checkbox did have "UTC". But, I went ahead and clicked OK anyway and poof! the clock was back to EDT! (I left "Area" still set to UTC -- suggestive of Frank Bell's comment, but I didn't apparently need to change that -- a bit confusing!)