Manpages - localtime.5

localtime - Local timezone configuration file

etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo…

The /etc/localtime file configures the system-wide timezone of the local system that is used by applications for presentation to the user. It should be an absolute or relative symbolic link pointing to usr/share/zoneinfo, followed by a timezone identifier such as “Europe/Berlin” or “Etc/UTC”. The resulting link should lead to the corresponding binary *tzfile*(5) timezone data for the configured timezone.

Because the timezone identifier is extracted from the symlink target name of /etc/localtime, this file may not be a normal file or hardlink.

If /etc/localtime is missing, the default “UTC” timezone is used.

The timezone may be overridden for individual programs by using the $TZ environment variable. See *environ*(7).

You may use *timedatectl*(1) to change the settings of this file from the command line during runtime. Use *systemd-firstboot*(1) to initialize the time zone on mounted (but not booted) system images.

*systemd*(1), *tzset*(3), *localtime*(3), *timedatectl*(1), *systemd-timedated.service*(8), *systemd-firstboot*(1)