Issue: Changing the system time zone after installation in Red Hat 5.8

Checked the date with date command.  showing the following output.

[support@smarthost ~]$ date

Wed Feb 13 13:42:57 PST 2013

Checked the /etc/localtime file it was not soft linked to the required timezone.

Hence created a soft link as follows to the /usr/share/zoneinfo/PST8PDT

[root@smarthost ~]# ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/PST8PDT /etc/localtime

[root@smarthost ~]# date

Wed Feb 13 21:52:07 UTC 2013

Still showing same old time. Thought about visiting the hwclock command

And the glitch is there, see below:

[root@smarthost ~]# hwclock   --show

Wed 13 Feb 2013 09:49:16 PM UTC -0.411498 seconds

Checked help on the command

[root@smarthost]# hwclock --help

hwclock - query and set the hardware clock (RTC)

Usage: hwclock [function] [options...]

Functions:

  -h | --help         show this help

  -r | --show         read hardware clock and print result

       --set          set the rtc to the time given with --date

  -s | --hctosys      set the system time from the hardware clock

  -w | --systohc      set the hardware clock to the current system time

       --systz        set the system time based on the current timezone

       --adjust       adjust the rtc to account for systematic drift since

                      the clock was last set or adjusted

       --getepoch     print out the kernel's hardware clock epoch value

       --setepoch     set the kernel's hardware clock epoch value to the

                      value given with --epoch

  -v | --version      print out the version of hwclock to stdout

Options:

  -u | --utc          the hardware clock is kept in UTC

       --localtime    the hardware clock is kept in local time

  -f | --rtc=path     special /dev/... file to use instead of default

       --directisa    access the ISA bus directly instead of /dev/rtc

       --badyear      ignore rtc's year because the bios is broken

       --date         specifies the time to which to set the hardware clock

       --epoch=year   specifies the year which is the beginning of the

                      hardware clock's epoch value

       --noadjfile    do not access /etc/adjtime. Requires the use of

                      either --utc or --localtime

       --adjfile=path specifies the path to the adjust file (default is

                      /etc/adjtime)

       --test         do everything except actually updating the hardware

                      clock or anything else

  -D | --debug        debug mode

Ran the following command and magic worked!

[root@smarthost ~]# hwclock -s

[root@smarthost ~]# date

Tue May 21 14:38:32 PDT 2013

chkconfig --level 35 ntpd on

[root@smarthost ~]# date

Tue May 21 14:47:06 PDT 2013