Running mariadb-tzinfo-to-sql with Ansible

Demonstrates how to automate the loading of time zone data into MariaDB using the `mysql_tzinfo_to_sql` utility, with techniques to ensure the task is idempotent.

For documentation about the mariadb-tzinfo-to-sql utility, see mysql_tzinfo_to_sql. This page is about running it using Ansible.

Installing or Upgrading the Package

First, we should install mariadb-tzinfo-to-sql if it is available on our system. For example, to install it on Ubuntu, we can use this task. For other systems, use the proper module and package name.

- name: Update timezone info
  tags: [ timezone-update ]
  apt:
    name: tzdata
    state: latest
    install_recommends: no
  register: timezone_info

This task installs the latest version of the tzdata, unless it is already installed and up to date. We register the timezone_info variables, so we can only run the next task if the package was installed or updated.

We also specify a timezone-update tag, so we can apply the role to only update the timezone tables.

Running the Script

The next task runs mariadb-tzinfo-to-sql.

- name: Move system timezone info into MariaDB
  tags: [ timezone-update ]
  shell: >
    mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo \
      | grep -v "^Warning" \
      | mysql --database=mysql
  when: timezone_info.changed

We use the shell module to run the command. Running a command in this way is not idempotent, so we specify when: timezone_info.changed to only run it when necessary. Some warnings may be generated, so we pipe the output of mysql_tzinfo_to_sql to grep to filter warnings out.

Using Galera

If we're using MariaDB Galera Cluster we'll want to only update the timezone tables in one node, because the other nodes will replicate the changes. For our convenience, we can run this operation on the first node. If the nodes hostnames are defined in a list called cluster_hosts, we can check if the current node is the first in this way:

when: timezone_info.changed and inventory_hostname == cluster_hosts[0].hostname

Content initially contributed by Vettabase Ltd.

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