Add a SystemD Service to Run at 4:30PM Australia/Sydney time when the server is set to UTC

by James McDonaldOct 14, 2025IT Tips0 comments

I have a server set to the UTC time zone. It is running near Sydney and reports are sent to east coast users every day at 4:30PM

When I add a cron job I have to convert from Australia/Sydney time and specify the runtime in UTC time. When daylight savings takes effect in the Australia/Sydney timezone I need to manually change the cronjob in October and April every year.

Display the current system timezone

timedatectl status

#output
               Local time: Tue 2025-10-14 11:11:55 UTC
           Universal time: Tue 2025-10-14 11:11:55 UTC
                 RTC time: Tue 2025-10-14 11:11:55
                Time zone: UTC (UTC, +0000)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no

Testing the OnCalendar snippet for the .timer file

systemd-analyze calendar 'Mon..Fri 16:30 Australia/Sydney'

Creating the SystemD Service and Timer Files

/etc/systemd/system/dailyreport.service

[Unit]
Description=Send daily report

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/senddailyreport

/etc/systemd/system/dailyreport.timer

[Unit]
Description=Run Send Daily Report

[Timer]
OnCalendar=Mon..Fri 16:30 Australia/Sydney
Persistent=true

[Install]

Restart / reload systemctl to get the timer to run

sudo systemctl daemon-reexec
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now dailyreport.timer

View the current system timers and when they next will run

systemctl list-timers --all

You can see the dailyreport.timer will next run in 23h