community.general.timezone module – Configure timezone setting

Note

This module is part of the community.general collection (version 9.4.0).

It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community.general.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.general.timezone.

Synopsis 

This module configures the timezone setting, both of the system clock and of the hardware clock. If you want to set up the NTP, use ansible.builtin.service module.
It is recommended to restart crond after changing the timezone, otherwise the jobs may run at the wrong time.
Several different tools are used depending on the OS/Distribution involved. For Linux it can use timedatectl or edit /etc/sysconfig/clock or /etc/timezone and hwclock. On SmartOS, sm-set-timezone, for macOS, systemsetup, for BSD, /etc/localtime is modified. On AIX, chtz is used.
Make sure that the zoneinfo files are installed with the appropriate OS package, like tzdata (usually always installed, when not using a minimal installation like Alpine Linux).
Windows and HPUX are not supported, please let us know if you find any other OS/distro in which this fails.

Parameter	Comments
hwclock aliases: rtc string	Whether the hardware clock is in UTC or in local timezone. Default is to keep current setting. Note that this option is recommended not to change and may fail to configure, especially on virtual environments such as AWS. At least one of name and hwclock are required. Only used on Linux. Choices: `"local"` `"UTC"`
name string	Name of the timezone for the system clock. Default is to keep current setting. At least one of name and hwclock are required.

Attribute	Support	Description
check_mode	Support: full	Can run in `check_mode` and return changed status prediction without modifying target.
diff_mode	Support: full	Will return details on what has changed (or possibly needs changing in `check_mode`), when in diff mode.

Note

On Ubuntu 24.04 the util-linux-extra package is required to provide the hwclock command.
On SmartOS the sm-set-timezone utility (part of the smtools package) is required to set the zone timezone.
On AIX only Olson/tz database timezones are usable (POSIX is not supported). An OS reboot is also required on AIX for the new timezone setting to take effect. Note that AIX 6.1+ is needed (OS level 61 or newer).

- name: Set timezone to Asia/Tokyo
  become: true
  community.general.timezone:
    name: Asia/Tokyo

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key	Description
diff complex	The differences about the given arguments. Returned: success
after dictionary	The values after change Returned: success
before dictionary	The values before change Returned: success