Scripted method to change TZ from UTC to a specific timezone?

["James Wu" <JWu@eyereturn.com>]

Hi all,

 

When I run the cmd "date", I get UTC time on a fresh boot of an imaged machine. I'd like to find a way to set the time to "America/New_York" for automatically via script. A reboot is ok if absolutely needed but not preferred.

 

I'm aware that I can run "dpkg-reconfigure tzdata"  but that requires user input.

 

I've tried the following methods without success:

"cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/timezone" + changing "UTC=yes to UTC=no" in /etc/default/rcS

I even tried rebooting afterwards

I've also tried "echo 'America/New_York' > /etc/timezone" as well instead of copying.

 

Am I missing something? Is there another way to change the tzdata from UTC without requiring user input?

 

Cheers,

James