Amazon EC2 time zone

Question

I have an Amazon EC2 dedicated instance (Fedora Linux). Although I took an instance in US West, it came set to EST.
I changed the timezone to PST (export TZ=America/Los_Angeles) and it works - for several hours. Then it resets itself to EST.

What am I doing wrong and how can I set it to PST permanently?

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 06 '10 at 07:15

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I don't run Fedora for my EC2 instances as I need something stable for more than 6 months, so I use CentOS... But it should be the same... Just run the following:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime

That should change your systems default timezone to PST and should only be affected when the instance is brought up from scratch.

answered Feb 06 '10 at 07:15

Jeremy Bouse

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Thanks! Also for the CentOs note. You're the second one to tell me the same this week. – Traveling Tech Guy Feb 06 '10 at 08:03
With Fedora's release every 6 months and only support the most current 3 versions policy you're unsupported after 18 months. – Jeremy Bouse Feb 06 '10 at 15:09
+1, worked like a charm. For those non-sysadmins like me, prefix with `sudo` – Jason McCreary Nov 29 '11 at 04:03

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 06 '10 at 02:37

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Change the ZONE setting in /etc/sysconfig/clock

answered Feb 06 '10 at 02:37

Philip Reynolds

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No such file in /etc/sysconfig :( – Traveling Tech Guy Feb 06 '10 at 02:39
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@TravelingTechGuy the file is there for Amazon Linux AMI (Centos). I'm not sure if it's there for other types of AMI – ericn Jan 30 '13 at 07:17

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 06 '10 at 07:29

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Have the config for setting timezone in your .bashrc .

In case you are looking for using the TZ in your application from the system, its a bad idea since EC2 instances that go down/crash can be a different system when they come back up.

answered Feb 06 '10 at 07:29

Sairam

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Amazon EC2 time zone

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