in my Torizon-based project, there is the need to set the local time zone in the dockerized application. On one hand timedatectl is enough to configure time zone in Torizon host, but not enough to align the application containers:
sudo timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Zurich
In the docker-compose file I have tried to propagate the links to host configuration using
But the result is a wrong/broken container configuration. I guess that Busybox host and Debian container require different locale time settings and files. Do you already know or have documentated how to configure it properly somewhere in the knowledge base?
Thanks again for the help in using Torizon and best regards,
I tried something similar to you but my volumes were different. So first I use timedatectl to set the timezone on the Torizon host. Then I ran a container with the following volumes: -v /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
Then when I checked the time inside the container I get the correct timezone:
root@apalis-imx8-06738453:/home/torizon# date
Wed Jun 16 10:19:24 PDT 2021
Hi @jeremias.tx , thank you for the suggestion, I have just tried but without success (details below, still UTC in the container), I had to add the binding for /usr/share/zoneinfo to avoid python error “Timezone offset does not match system offset: 0 != 7200. Please, check your config files”.
I am using a python container by the Torizon VSCode Extension. Is it possible the base container image is different from the one you have configured on your side?
docker-compose volumes:
- /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro
- /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
- /usr/share/zoneinfo:/usr/share/zoneinfo:ro
colibri:~$ timedatectl
Local time: Mon 2021-06-21 11:27:57 CEST
Universal time: Mon 2021-06-21 09:27:57 UTC
RTC time: Mon 2021-06-21 09:27:59
Time zone: Europe/Zurich (CEST, +0200)
System clock synchronized: yes
NTP service: active
RTC in local TZ: no
colibri:~$ date
Mon Jun 21 11:28:00 CEST 2021
colibri:~$ ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 35 Jun 16 11:11 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Zurich
colibri:~$ docker exec -it my_container_1 /bin/sh
# date
Mon Jun 21 09:28:28 UTC 2021
# ls -l /etc/timezone
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10 Mar 19 13:23 /etc/timezone
# ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Apr 8 00:00 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC
Since /etc/localtime is a symlink in the container, I suspect mapping a volume onto that will have issues. Can you map it to the target of the symlink instead?
@drew.tx thanks for the thought, but unfortunately it does not work, I have an error in Python library, maybe some further alignment is needed at system level
“Timezone offset does not match system offset: 0 != 7200. Please, check your config files.”
So just to summarize here what I did on my machine was the following:
Set timezone with: sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Los_Angeles on the host.
Check the date on the host after this change: Thu Jul 1 11:43:37 PDT 2021
Run a container as follows: docker run -it -d -v /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro torizon/debian:2-bullseye bash. The torizon/debian:2-bullseye image here should be what the Python template in the VSCode extension uses as the base image
Get a shell inside the container with: docker exec -it 7 bash
Check the date in the container now: Thu Jul 1 11:45:57 PDT 2021
Dear @jeremias.tx,
thanks for the answer, I confirm your suggestion is fine for the python applications, but for some reason it is not propagated as well in the UI/frontend based on the debian image “torizon/kiosk-mode-browser-vivante:2” with the kiosk browsers (Chromium&COG). I have noticed that the /etc/localtime is handled somehow differently than in the base container. Below further details:
On the host, after timedatectl the zone is Europe/Zurich:
colibri-imx8x-06800850:~$ ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 35 Jun 16 11:11 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Zurich
In the torizon/kiosk-mode-browser-vivante:2 docker container it is UTC even if /etc/localtime is bound as volume to either /etc/localtime or the zoneinfo/Europe/Zurich itself. Maybe something else is re-creating it.
torizon@7b82264ab3d6:/$ date
Wed Oct 6 14:22:22 UTC 2021
torizon@7b82264ab3d6:/$ ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Aug 16 00:00 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC
torizon@7b82264ab3d6:/$ ls -l /etc/timezone
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10 Mar 19 2021 /etc/timezone
Thanks for the suggestions and the attention, kindly,
ldvp
In addition to what Drew shared. I tried my previous steps for the torizon/kiosk-mode-browser-vivante:2 and it still works to set the timezone inside that container.
apalis-imx8-06738453:~$ sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Los_Angeles
apalis-imx8-06738453:~$ date
Wed Oct 6 12:19:45 PDT 2021
apalis-imx8-06738453:~$ docker run -d --rm --name=kiosk --env KIOSK_LAUNCHER=cog -v /tmp:/tmp -v /var/run/dbus:/var/run/dbus -v /dev/galcore:/dev/galcore --device-cgroup-rule='c 199:* rmw' -v /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro torizon/kiosk-mode-browser-vivante:$CT_TAG_KIOSK_MODE_BROWSER https://www.toradex.com
fe8139e5ec3b1de93c1a28a44d18b8a688d1473e755f6685eacde737deb2cf4d
apalis-imx8-06738453:~$ docker exec -it f bash
torizon@fe8139e5ec3b:/$ date
Wed Oct 6 12:20:00 PDT 2021
How are you running the torizon/kiosk-mode-browser-vivante:2 container?
To run the kiosk container you generally need 2 containers. A Weston container and then the kiosk container itself. Are you bind mounting the relevant “time” files into both containers?
Hi @jeremias.tx and @drew.tx ,
thanks for the hints and your tests, I confirm it is working if /etc/localtime and /etc/timezone are mounted in both weston and browser, but taking care of not mounting /usr/share/zoneinfo as well. If the latter is mounted, the links are sort of reset to UTC instead of being aligned with the host system.
All the best,
ldvp
