apt-get install tzdata noninteractive - bash

Question

When I try to
apt-get install -y tzdata
the command line option for picking timezone shows up. I am trying to use this in a script to do some setup, how can I make the apt-get run without user input?
I know to reconfigure the tzdata I can do
echo "America/New_York" > /etc/timezone
dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata
But when installing I need it to run fully even if it doesn't set the right timezone, I can always reconfigure it.
I tried
echo 5 | apt-get install -y tzdata
but it is not working as expected.

Answer 1

This is the script I used
(Updated Version with input from #elquimista from the comments)
#!/bin/bash
ln -fs /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y tzdata
dpkg-reconfigure --frontend noninteractive tzdata
Seems to work fine.
As one liner:
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends tzdata

Answer 2

If someone wants to achieve it in Dockerfile, use as below.
RUN DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -y install tzdata

Answer 3

To avoid playing directly with symlinks and to run configuration only once, I suggest to use debconf-set-selections command:
echo 'tzdata tzdata/Areas select Europe' | debconf-set-selections
echo 'tzdata tzdata/Zones/Europe select Paris' | debconf-set-selections
DEBIAN_FRONTEND="noninteractive" apt install -y tzdata

Answer 4

I have recently found the following solution in a Dockerfile building the Cingulata FHE library:
ln -snf /usr/share/zoneinfo/$(curl https://ipapi.co/timezone) /etc/localtime
It basically uses the API provided by ipapi.co to retrieve the timezone information. This automatically configures the timezone properly instead of skipping the dialog and using the default (UTC).

Answer 5

All credit for this should go to #PYA but the right order should be:
ln -fs /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime
export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
apt-get install -y tzdata
dpkg-reconfigure --frontend noninteractive tzdata

Answer 6

Here is how I did it:
echo 1 > input.txt
echo 1 >> input.txt
apt-get install -y tzdata < input.txt
ln -fs /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime
echo America/Los_Angeles > /etc/timezone
The first two echo statements create a text file that contains the selection numbers for the geographic area menu and the city/region menu. This file is then used to provide input to the apt-get install command. The tzdata package will be installed without asking for any user input. The timezone will be set to Africa/Abidjan as if you entered 1 and 1 in response to the prompts you would normally get. Then I change the timezone to what I want with the last two commands.
Instead of 1 and 1, you could use the actual numbers for the geographic area and city/region that you want, but it seems to me that those numbers could change.

Answer 7

here is what worked for me:
from ubuntu:bionic
ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y tzdata
RUN unlink /etc/localtime
RUN ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/New_York /etc/localtime

Answer 8

After reading the comments, I did two steps below to use the TZ environment variable:
Added the following to the Dockerfile
RUN DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends tzdata && apt-get clean
Added the following to the docker CMD script:
if [ ! -z "${TZ}" ]; then
echo "${TZ}" > /etc/timezone
dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata
fi
This worked for me and allowed me to set the time zone when starting the container.