How to fix 'Configuring tzdata' interactive input when building Docker images

Often, when installing deb packages in your Dockerfile, some packages will install tzdata as a dependency.

The tzdata installer will try to interactively prompt you for your location using

Configuring tzdata
------------------

Please select the geographic area in which you live. Subsequent configuration
questions will narrow this down by presenting a list of cities, representing
the time zones in which they are located.

 1. Africa      4. Australia  7. Atlantic  10. Pacific  13. Etc
 2. America     5. Arctic     8. Europe    11. SystemV
 3. Antarctica  6. Asia       9. Indian    12. US
Geographic area:

This will stall your image build.

In order to fix that, we’ll need to make the tzdata prompt non-interactive.

The preferred method is to add

ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

before the first RUN statements in your Dockerfile.

Alternatively you can run just the apt install or apt-get install command using DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive:

RUN DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt install -y tzdata

This will automatically select a default configuration for tzdata.