Summary
Running a container in VyOS using podman will normally use UTC+0 as its local timezone.
A workaround is to set the timezone as environment variable like so:
set container name dns environment TZ value 'Europe/Stockholm'
However it seems that podman do have its own variable for this (--tz) which perhaps could be exposed aswell as syntax when configuring a container?
Feature request to add timezone Set timezone for the container as option when configuring a container in VyOS.
Values (and variants of) such as "Europe/Stockholm", "UTC" and "local" should be supported.
"Local" means that podman will match the host timezone.
Note that some containers will still need a TZ environment variable to function properly according to the podman docs (java is mentioned as example).
An alternative feature-request would be if --tz=local would be by default set by podman in VyOS silently to match the host already configured timezone?
Use case
Running containers in VyOS will often show incorrect time in logs that the container itself creates because it thinks its in timezone UTC+0 and does not automatically pick up the host timezone which is already set (such as "Europe/Stockholm").
Additional information
Current options (VyOS Stream 2026.03):
vyos@vyos# set container name dns
Possible completions:
allow-host-networks Allow sharing host networking with container
allow-host-pid Allow sharing host process namespace with container
arguments The command's arguments for this container
+ capability Grant individual Linux capability to container instance
command Override the default CMD from the image
cpu-quota This limits the number of CPU resources the container can use
(default: 0)
description Description
+> device Add a host device to the container
disable Disable instance
entrypoint Override the default ENTRYPOINT from the image
+> environment Add custom environment variables
gid Group ID this container will run as
> health-check Configure container health checks
host-name Container host name
image Container image to use
+> label Add label variables
log-driver Configure container log driver (default: journald)
memory Memory (RAM) available to this container (default: 512)
+ name-server Domain Name Servers (DNS) addresses
+> network Attach user defined network to container
+> port Publish port to the container
privileged Grant root capabilities to the container
restart Restart options for container (default: on-failure)
shared-memory Shared memory available to this container (default: 64)
> sysctl Configure namespaced kernel parameters of the container
+> tmpfs Mount a tmpfs filesystem into the container
uid User ID this container will run as
+> volume Mount a volume into the containerRef:
https://oneuptime.com/blog/post/2026-03-16-run-container-timezone-podman/view
https://docs.podman.io/en/stable/markdown/podman-run.1.html#tz-timezone