/etc/localtime

systemd
Developer Lennart Poettering lennart@poettering.net
Developer Shawn Landden shawnlandden@gmail.com
localtime 5
localtime Local time zone configuration file

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

## Description

The `/etc/localtime` file configures the system-wide time zone 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 time zone identifier such as `Europe/Berlin` or `Etc/UTC`. The resulting link should lead to the corresponding binary tzfile 5 time zone data for the configured time zone.

As the time zone identifier is extracted from the symlink target name of `/etc/localtime` this file may not be a normal file or hardlink.

The time zone 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.

## See Also

systemd 1, tzset 3, localtime 3, timedatectl 1, systemd-timedated.service 8