Table of Contents

Purpose of localtime volume in helm charts

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• TZ Environment Variable: Another way to set the timezone in a container is to use the TZ environment variable. This doesn't require mounting /etc/localtime but can be less consistent across different environments or container images.

Example Configuration

With this setup, your container will display the time according to the host system's timezone.

volumes:
  - name: localtime
    hostPath:
      path: /etc/localtime

volumeMounts:
  - name: localtime
    mountPath: /etc/localtime
    readOnly: true

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Summary

The mounting of /etc/localtime in your Helm chart is a method to ensure the container uses the same timezone as the host system. This is useful for applications that need to display the correct local time, especially in logs and time-sensitive operations.

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You can specify the TZ variable in a Kubernetes Pod or Deployment definition:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: timezone-example
spec:
  containers:
  - name: myapp
    image: myapp:latest
    env:
    - name: TZ
      value: "America/New_York"

3. In a Helm Chart

In your Helm values or templates:

env:
  - name: TZ
    value: "America/New_York"

Examples of Timezones You Can Use

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