%general-entities; ]> setclock configuring The setclock script reads the time from the hardware clock, also known as BIOS or the Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) clock. If the hardware clock is set to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), this script will convert the hardware clock's time to your local time using the /etc/localtime file (which tells hwclock which timezone you are in). There is no way to detect whether or not your hardware clock is set to UTC time, so this needs to be manually configured. If you can't remember whether or not you have set your hardware clock to UTC time, you can find out by following this procedure. Run the hwclock --show command. This will tell you what the current time according to the hardware clock is. If this time matches whatever your watch says, then your hardware clock is set to local time. If the output from hwclock is not local time, chances are it is set to UTC time. Verify this by adding or subtracting the proper amount of hours for your timezone to this hwclock time. For example, if you live in the MST timezone, which is also known as GMT -0700, add 7 hours to the local time. Then account for Daylight Savings Time which means you have to remove an hour (or only add 6 in the first place) during the summer months. Change the value of the UTC variable below to a value of 0 (zero) if your hardware clock is not set to UTC time. Create a new file /etc/sysconfig/clock by running the following: cat > /etc/sysconfig/clock << "EOF" # Begin /etc/sysconfig/clock UTC=1 # End /etc/sysconfig/clock EOF A good hint explaining how to deal with time on LFS is available at . It explains issues such as time zones, UTC, and the TZ environment variable.