I am working on a client requirement that the worker nodes needs to have a specific time zone configured for their apps to run properly. We have tried things such as using the TZ environment and also mounting a volume on /etc/localtime that points to the right file in /usr/share/zoneinfo// - these work to some extent but it seems I will need to use daemonsets to modify the node configuration for some of the apps.

The concern I have is that the specific pod that needs to make this change on the nodes will have to be run with host privileges and leaving such pods running on all pods doesn't sound good. The documentation says that the pods on daemonsets must have the restart policy of always so I can't have them exit after making the changes too.

I believe I can address this specific concern with an init container that run with host privileges, make the appropriate changes on the node and exit. The other pods in the daemonset will run after the init container is run successfully and finally, all the other pods get scheduled on the nodes. I also believe this sequence works the same way when I add another nodes to the cluster.

Does that sound about right? Are there better approaches?