Invalid Date Linux

Question

I'm testing my backup script on Linux and when I try to set the date to '20141019' I have this error:

# date +%Y%m%d -s "20141019"
date: invalid date ‘20141019’

This works:

# date +%Y%m%d -s "20141018"
20141018

# date +%Y%m%d -s "20141020"
20141020

Another problem to set date to 28 days ago at 20141116

# date -d '28 day ago' +%Y-%m-%d
2014-10-18

// at 20141117:
# date -d '28 day ago' +%Y-%m-%d
2014-10-20

What is wrong with linux date v. 8.21?

Answer 1

You can try this command.

Command: timedatectl set-time YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

Set date and time: timedatectl set-time '2015-11-23 08:10:40'

Set only date: timedatectl set-time '2015-12-01'

Set only time: timedatectl set-time '10:42:43'

Answer 2

I just tried this tutorial

It give you multiple solutions to set date and time, may be you can find something to solve your problem.

Answer 3

This is due to a problem with the timezone DST - if the timezone has entered the daylight saving time, then it won't have the midnight to be counted on GNU date:

~$ TZ=America/Sao_Paulo date -d '20161016 + 1 day'       
date: invalid date `20161016 + 1 day'
~$ TZ=America/Sao_Paulo date -d '20171015 + 1 day'  
date: invalid date `20171015 + 1 day'
~$ TZ=America/Sao_Paulo date -d '20181021 + 1 day'            
date: invalid date `20181021 + 1 day'

In this case, you can use UTC for that:

~$ TZ=UTC date -d '20171015 + 1 day'  
Mon Oct 16 00:00:00 UTC 2017

So try:

~$ TZ=UTC date +%Y%m%d -d "20141019"
20141019