Setting timezone in Cron Docker container.

[f6310]

I'm having an issue with setting a timezone in the cron container. The cron is successfully firing but at the wrong time.

The "core" container and app is set yo Australia/Sydney but the cron container is set to UTC time. When running the automated transactions at 0300 UTC, they're being run at 1400 AEDT instead.

How do I make the "cron" container recognise the TZ command?

Here is the compose snippet for the "cron" container.

 firefly-iii-cron:
  image: alpine
  container_name: firefly-iii-cron
  networks:
  - firefly-iii
  restart: always
  environment:
  - PUID=1000
  - PGID=1000
  - TZ=Australia/Sydney
  command: sh -c "echo \"0 3 * * * wget -qO- http://firefly-iii-core:8080/api/v1/cron/eSVSkuDtcyPaCY6F4tRCvkDvJDDbmppi\" | crontab - && crond -f -L /dev/stdout"

networks:
 firefly-iii:
  driver: bridge

[JC5]

I see you're missing a lot of spaces in your file. Is that a copy/paste mistake or is this your actual file?

[electrofloat]

I just ran into this issue trying to automate gocardless import. The problem is that the alpine container does not contain the tzdata package anymore, so setting the TZ env does nothing unfortunately.

(The other issue for me is that it also does not have curl...)

[electrofloat]

Although it seems that it can be remedied with something like this:

command: sh -c "apk add tzdata && ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Brussels /etc/localtime && echo -e \"0 3 * * * wget -qO- http://fireflyinstall:8080/api/v1/cron/....

This will install the tzdata package every time the container is started, but at least it will have the set timezone.

[JC5]

The current Docker compose file contains the following command. Would that not work anymore?

https://github.com/firefly-iii/docker/blob/main/docker-compose.yml#L35

[electrofloat]

Ahh.. that's interesting. I've never checked the current compose file in the repo.
I've followed the docs here: https://docs.firefly-iii.org/how-to/data-importer/installation/docker/
Which takes me to: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/firefly-iii/docker/main/docker-compose-importer.yml

which does not have the tzdata install part.

[JC5]

Good point, fixed quickly.

[f6310]

I was able to resolve the issue by setting the cron to run hourly instead of daily at 3:00AM UTC. The recurring transactions are now being triggered at midnight local time.

I found this article on Alpine Linux and changing the timezone. Without scripting it to install each time it is just easier to fire the cron hourly.