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This used to work to set the timezone. I have a container on Alpine 3.9.4 where it worked:

RUN apk add --no-cache tzdata ENV TZ America/Chicago RUN apk del tzdata

I'm now creating a Docker container with Alpine Linux v3.10.3, and it doesn't work anymore. A user suggested that I need to copy to /etc/localtime:

RUN apk add --no-cache tzdata ENV TZ America/Chicago RUN cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/$TZ /etc/localtime && echo $TZ > /etc/timezone RUN apk del tzdata

Neither of these work if tzdata is removed. However, they work if tzdata is not removed. Why is this?

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    Interesting. It doesn't work on alpine:latest. As soon as I remove tzdata, the container decides it's going to be UTC. Commented Apr 14, 2020 at 20:43
  • This question was the answer to my problem. :) Crazy that this single StackExchange post seems to be the only place on the Internet that mentions this behavior. Commented Apr 28, 2021 at 12:50
  • @sizzlebeam Glad to help! Commented Apr 28, 2021 at 19:12

3 Answers 3

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The package tzdata contains information about the time zones. It tells software that the zone CEST is UTC+02:00, and when it's in use.

When you remove the tzdata package all you have left is a variable with a string.

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You can try the setup-timezone script from alpine-conf package for that scenario.

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So I copy the /etc/localtime back to /usr/share/zoneinfo/$TZ and it works fine for me. here is my solution:

ENV TZ America/Chicago RUN apk add --no-cache --virtual .build-tz tzdata;\ cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/$TZ /etc/localtime && echo $TZ > /etc/timezone;\ apk del .build-tz;\ echo /usr/share/zoneinfo/$TZ | cut -d'/' -f-5 | xargs mkdir -p;\ cp /etc/localtime /usr/share/zoneinfo/$TZ
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