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Rather fresh install of Ubuntu 14.10. Have installed Gnome Flahsback which I am currently using. Have updated Date/Time to show Day MM DD HH:MM:SS. That's about it.

Due to another issue I checked dmesg and found the following:

systemd-timedated[25780]: /etc/localtime should be a symbolic link to a
                          timezone data file in /usr/share/zoneinfo/.

Checking it out, it is a regular file and not a link.

$ la /etc/localtime
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.2K Jan 11 14:18 /etc/localtime

Further there is a link in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ as:

$ la /usr/share/zoneinfo/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Oct 23 01:47 /usr/share/zoneinfo/localtime -> /etc/localtime

The localtime manual states:

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

and should typically be e.g.:

/etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Vatican

Would it be OK to manually fix? As remove the file in /etc and add a link. Any implications?

Have not noticed this on older versions, but a quick check on a previous install, believe it to be 12.10 (only mounted root from an old HDD), has the same issue. Is this perhaps an Ubuntu or Debian hack of some sort?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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You should reconfigure the tzdata package to set /etc/localtime (dpkg-reconfigure tzdata). It used to be the case that /etc/localtime was a symbolic link (before Debian etch, so around 8.04?). It no longer is, and I can't find anything in the changelogs of the last release listed in the Packages index (10.04).

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  • So I am perhaps miss-reading this, from man: "... this file may not be a normal file ..." – do they perhaps mean more of "might not be"? I read it as "should not be". Which in turn also follows the message in logs: "/etc/localtime should be ..."
    – user367890
    Jan 12, 2015 at 4:09
  • @user367890 In that form, may not means should not, you're right. But the assumption behind that statement (/etc/localtime being a link) is not true, so that statement is not relevant.
    – muru
    Jan 12, 2015 at 4:15
  • So the answer is to let it be and ignore the log message :), Do not like it but that is the way it is I guess.
    – user367890
    Jan 12, 2015 at 4:54
  • @user367890 The message is because of systemd-timedated (if you check, we didn't even have a localtime manpage before 14.10). So the right thing to do will be filing a bug on Launchpad, presumably the systemd package, that this message is pointless on Ubuntu systems.
    – muru
    Jan 12, 2015 at 5:03
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Reported and fixed.

  • package systemd - 218-5ubuntu1

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1409594

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  • Good to know! And thanks for taking the trouble!
    – muru
    Jan 23, 2015 at 22:15
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You may need to install tzdata as follows, if efforts to set or reconfigure the timezone data fail ...

sudo apt-get install tzdata

... then follow the onscreen instructions to select your region and city.

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