/etc/localtime not a link
Solution 1
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).
Solution 2
Reported and fixed.
- package systemd - 218-5ubuntu1
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1409594
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user367890
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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user367890 over 1 year
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
[…] 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?
-
muru over 9 years@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. -
user367890 over 9 yearsSo 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.
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muru over 9 years@user367890 The message is because of
systemd-timedated
(if you check, we didn't even have alocaltime
manpage before 14.10). So the right thing to do will be filing a bug on Launchpad, presumably thesystemd
package, that this message is pointless on Ubuntu systems.