I have an EC2 instance that runs linux. The timezone is set to UTC time and I need my cron tasks to work on UK timezone. However, I am unable to change the system clock to the UK timezone. It must remain in UTC.
I know I can use CRON_TZ=Europe/London, yet when I do so my command below will not run on the UK timezone. Only UTC.
CRON_TZ=Europe/London
10 15 * * * echo "$(date) This is UTC time!" > /tmp/utc.txt
10 15 * * * TZ=Europe/London echo "$(date) This is Europe/London time!" > /tmp/london2.txt
This occurs even if I put the timezone in the command line instead of at the top of the crontab file. I have restarted the cron server. I have edited the crontab file from root and from a specific user. I have even added the cron_tz variable at the start of each command. As shown below. Nothing is making cron trigger at the UK time.
* * * * * TZ=Europe/London echo "$(date) This is Europe/London time!" > /tmp/london2.txt
The only way to fix this is this:
UK time is 1 hour ahead of UTC time. When I change the system clock to November, the clocks in the UK go back 1 hour and are then equal to UTC time. This is the only time cron will run at the right time. Is there any way to make cron trigger at the UK time without having to worry about the clocks going forwards or back?