Linux current date and time

How To Print Current Date and Time In Linux and Windows From Command Line?

Getting current date-time information is very different for different systems and programming languages. We will look at this simple but big issue for the vast majority of operating systems and programming languages.

Linux/FreeBSD/Unix

We can date information from the GUI panel clock but we will look for the command line. We will issue date command to get the current date and time. Linux date format has a lot of options. Alternatively, we can call these as Unix date or bash date examples.

Linux FreeBSD Unix date and time with Different Formats

Only Hour and Minute

We can provide parameters to get only time partition from date command.

Year Month Day Format

We can get current year month day like below

Year-Month-Day Format

We can use ready to use parameters like +%F which will list year-month-day

Month/Day/Year Format

We can use +%D to get a date according to locale settings

Display Date and Time In Windows Command Line

Windows operating system provides date and time commands in order to print and set current date and time. After issuing the command date and time the current date and time will be displayed and then we will be asked for a new date and time. We can skip this just by pressing Enter or simply do not entering any value.

Display Date and Time In Windows Command Line

Python Datetime Module and Functions

Python is a scripting language and to get current date time information python function in a code file can be used. An alternative is python interpreter. In this example, we will use an interpreter.

We can get time information with %I:%M format string parameters.

We get the year, month and day as a string like below

Python Datetime Module and Functions

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Display Date And Time In Linux

H ow do I display date and time in Linux using the command line and GUI options?

To display date and time under Linux operating system using command prompt use the date command. It can also display the current time / date in the given FORMAT. We can set the system date and time as root user too.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	No
Requirements	Linux with the terminal application
Est. reading time	3 minutes

Syntax

Open a terminal and type the following command:
date

You can format the date as follows in dd-mm-yy format:
date +»%d-%m-%y»

Simply display the current time:
date «+%T»

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To print the date of the day before yesterday, run:
date —date=’2 days ago’
Want to see the day of year of Christmas in the current year? Try:
date —date=’25 Dec’ +%j
Display the current full month name and the day of the month:
date ‘+%B %d’

Display date and time in Linux using the timedatectl

Most modern Linux distro with systemd use the timedatectl command. It is used to query and change the system clock and its settings, and enable or disable time synchronization services. All you have to do is type the following command:
$ timedatectl

TZ environment variable

The TZ environment tells Linux what time zone you are in. Many times when you want to change your time zone temporarily. For example, you might want to print the current date and time in “America/Los_Angeles” timezone even though you are in “Europe/London”. So we can set TZ, give a command like as follows when using TCSH/CSH:
setenv TZ timezone
For BASH/KSH/SH (see export command:
TZ=timezone; export TZ
Another option:
TZ=»America/Los_Angeles» date
TZ=»Asia/Tokyo» date
Use the following command to print a list of all timezones:
timedatectl list-timezones
timedatectl list-timezones | more
## filter out data using the grep command/egrep command ##
timedatectl list-timezones | grep -i Hong_kong
timedatectl list-timezones | grep -i paris
timedatectl list-timezones | grep -E -i ‘paris|london|kolkata’

The TZ Environment Variable on Linux

GUI Tool: Time Administration

The Time Administration Tool allows you to set the time, date and timezone of your system, as well as setting any time server to synchronize your local time server. Type the following command to start time admin tool:
sudo time-admin
## OR ##
time-admin

Fig.01: Linux Date and Time Administration Tool

How to change date and time settings with Gnome based Linux desktop

First, you need to Settings in Activities and then click Details in the sidebar. Make sure you click Date & Time in the sidebar to open the panel:

Conclusion

In this quick tutorial, you learned about the date command that you can use to see or change the date/time under Linux operating systems. We further explained how to use the GUI tools too. The date command has many more options. See man page by typing the following man command:
$ man date

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How To Get / Print Current Date in Unix / Linux Shell Script

H ow do I get the current date in Unix or Linux shell scripting and store it into a shell variable? How do I print the current date using Unix shell script? How can I display the current time in Linux shell script?

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	No
Requirements	Linux or Unix
Est. reading time	3 minutes

You need to use the following syntax to print current date and time on screen:

Print current date and time in Unix shell script

To store current date and time to a variable, enter:
now=$(date)
OR
now=`date`

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Print Current Date in Unix

To print this date either use the printf or echo statement:
echo «$now»
echo «Current date: $now»
OR use the printf command:
printf «%s\n» «$now»
OR
printf «Current date and time in Linux %s\n» «$now»

Getting the current date and time in Linux shell script

You can format and display date using the following syntax:

Finding the current date and time in Linux or Unix using the date command

A list of date command format codes

FORMAT code	Description
%%	a literal %
%a	locale’s abbreviated weekday name (e.g., Sun)
%A	locale’s full weekday name (e.g., Sunday)
%b	locale’s abbreviated month name (e.g., Jan)
%B	locale’s full month name (e.g., January)
%c	locale’s date and time (e.g., Thu Mar 3 23:05:25 2005)
%C	century; like %Y, except omit last two digits (e.g., 20)
%d	day of month (e.g., 01)
%D	date; same as %m/%d/%y
%e	day of month, space padded; same as %_d
%F	full date; same as %Y-%m-%d
%g	last two digits of year of ISO week number (see %G)
%G	year of ISO week number (see %V); normally useful only with %V
%h	same as %b
%H	hour (00..23)
%I	hour (01..12)
%j	day of year (001..366)
%k	hour, space padded ( 0..23); same as %_H
%l	hour, space padded ( 1..12); same as %_I
%m	month (01..12)
%M	minute (00..59)
%n	a newline
%N	nanoseconds (000000000..999999999)
%p	locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM; blank if not known
%P	like %p, but lower case
%q	quarter of year (1..4)
%r	locale’s 12-hour clock time (e.g., 11:11:04 PM)
%R	24-hour hour and minute; same as %H:%M
%s	seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
%S	second (00..60)
%t	a tab
%T	time; same as %H:%M:%S
%u	day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday
%U	week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
%V	ISO week number, with Monday as first day of week (01..53)
%w	day of week (0..6); 0 is Sunday
%W	week number of year, with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
%x	locale’s date representation (e.g., 12/31/99)
%X	locale’s time representation (e.g., 23:13:48)
%y	last two digits of year (00..99)
%Y	year
%z	+hhmm numeric time zone (e.g., -0400)
%:z	+hh:mm numeric time zone (e.g., -04:00)
%::z	+hh:mm:ss numeric time zone (e.g., -04:00:00)
%. z	numeric time zone with : to necessary precision (e.g., -04, +05:30)
%Z	alphabetic time zone abbreviation (e.g., EDT)

Sample shell script to display the current date and time

Conclusion

You learned how to display the current date and time on Linux and Unix-like systems. We also explained how to store date or time in a shell variable. For more info see date command man page by typing the following date command or GNU/date help page here:
man date

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Set Time/Date/Timezone in Ubuntu Linux

Time is an important aspect in Linux systems especially in critical services such as cron jobs. Having the correct time on the server ensures that the server operates in a healthy environment that consists of distributed systems and maintains accuracy in the workplace.

In this tutorial, we will focus on how to set time/date/time zone and to synchronize the server clock with your Ubuntu Linux machine.

Check Current Time

You can verify the current time and date using the date and the timedatectl commands. These linux commands can be executed straight from the terminal as a regular user or as a superuser. The commands are handy usefulness of the two commands is seen when you want to correct a wrong time from the command line.

Using the date command

Log in as a root user and use the command as follows

Output

You can also use the same command to check a date 2 days ago

Output

Using timedatectl command

Checking on the status of the time on your system as well as the present time settings, use the command timedatectl as shown

Changing Time

We use the timedatectl to change system time using the format HH:MM: SS. HH stands for the hour in 24-hour format, MM stands for minutes and SS for seconds.

Setting the time to 09:08:07 use the command as follows (using the timedatectl)

using date command

Changing time means all the system processes are running on the same clock putting the desktop and server at the same time. From the command line, use date command as follows

Where,
• 10: Hour (hh)
• 13: Minute (mm)
• 13: Second (ss)

To change the locale to either AM or PM use the %p in the following format.

Change Date

Generally, you want your system date and time is set automatically. If for some reason you have to change it manually using date command, we can use this command :

It will set your current date and time of your system into ‘January 25, 2014′ and ’09:17:00 AM’. Please note, that you must have root privilege to do this.

You can use timedatectl to set the time and the date respectively. The accepted format is ‘YYYY-MM-DD’, ‘YYYY’ represents the year, ‘MM’ the month in two digits and ‘DD’ for the day in two digits.

Changing the date to ’15 January 2019′, you should use the following command:

Create custom date format

To create custom date format, use a plus sign (+)

%D format follows Year/Month/Day format.

You can also put the day name if you want. Here are some examples :

List/Change time zone

Changing the time zone is crucial when you want to ensure that everything synchronizes with the Network Time Protocol. The first thing to do is to list all the region’s time zones using the list-time zones option or grep to make the command easy to understand

The above command will present a scrollable format.

Recommended timezone for servers is UTC as it doesn’t have daylight savings. If you know, the specific time zones set it using the name using the following command

To display timezone execute

Set the Local-rtc

The Real-time clock (RTC) which is also referred to as the hardware clock is independent of the operating system and continues to run even when the server is shut down.

Use the following command

In addition, the following command for the local time

Check/Change CMOS Time

The computer CMOS battery will automatically synchronize time with system clock as long as the CMOS is working correctly.

Use the hwclock command to check the CMOS date as follows

To synchronize the CMOS date with system date use the following format

Conclusion

To have the correct time for your Linux environment is critical because many operations depend on it. Such operations include logging events and cron jobs as well.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment.

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