Issue
I have a scheduling use case that deals with end user local time.
I couldn’t find information on how EC2/Amazon Linux 2 updates its timezone database. (Most likely based on IANA one)
Does Amazon Linux 2 guarantee that timezone (TZ) changes (ex: daylight saving changeover dates) are correctly reflected in the running EC2 instances?
For instance:
zdump -v /usr/share/zoneinfo/<Region>/<Timezone> | grep <year>
shows accurate results about timezone changeover dates for my local timezone, but I can't say enough about the others.
Like most other Unix distributions, Amazon Linux 2 likely updates its TZ database regularly from a global authority (such as IANA). But I'm struggling to find this piece of information.
Solution
Like most other Linux distributions, Amazon Linux 2 (AL2) distributes time zone data via a package named tzdata that is built specifically for that distribution.
You can search the AL2 release notes for tzdata to find the latest version and when it was installed.
Currently the latest release notes are version 2.0.20221004.0, built on October 10, 2022 and released October 20, 2022. The notes indicate that the package tzdata-2022d-1.amzn2.0.1.noarch was included, which corresponds to the 2022d release from IANA - which was the current at the date the AL2 release was built.
Since then, IANA has released 2022e (on Oct 11) and 2022f (on Oct 29).
You can always update to the latest version that Amazon has built a package for via the command:
yum update tzdata
Answered By - Matt Johnson-Pint Answer Checked By - Gilberto Lyons (WPSolving Admin)