SAMS Teach Yourself Unix in 10 Minutes

Using date

The date command will either return the current date and time or allow you to change them. You can only change the date if you have proper permission to do so. It is important to have the correct date on your system because so many specific things rely on time to function properly. For instance, consider event logs. If you want a record of events such as security issues in your Unix system, you would want those entries to show up in the log, of course. You would want to know, for example, that someone was trying to enter your Unix system without permission. However, even if you have your system set up to log such events, the log entries will be of little use if the time and date on your system are not correct. For instance, if the ...