Set locale time

Helps >

set new default locale


as root, run

find the locale to add -usually you want UTF-8 (listed herehttp://www.science.co.il/...)

hit Space bar to select each one and then hit Enter

or manually,
and uncomment the languages you need (delete #), then Ctrl-X, y Enter

or use a command like..



to set your default language



change content to

LANG=xx_YY.UTF-8

and save (replace x and Y with your language to be default for system)

or try

after any changes you must run

then log out and back in



UTC time and Debian's clock

If the BIOS clock is local time, and debian's clock is shifted to what it thinks is local time, because it thinks that hardware clock is set to UTC.
The method to edit /etc/default/rcS, with "UTC=no" hasn't ever worked for me. Following Debian Wiki, we must edit /etc/adjtime,


change "UTC" to "LOCAL" then Ctrl-X, y enter

but does it work ??

failing that, you should try ntp (see below) or you can 'fix' your BIOS clock and adjust the time back/forward to UTC time, so that Debian adds hours for your time-zone and the displayed time will be correct

You can set your time-zone with



update the time with ntp

you can have the system time updated by a network time protocol by installing ntp


the ntp daemon will update your Debian clock constantly, if there is a constant internet conection.
If the connection is not constant, you can run

to update the clock once you have internet


update the time with hwclock

in case you are out of internet service for a long while, you can set the hardware clock with the hwclock command, e.g.:




Home | Content | Site Map | TOP