systemd 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 tzfile5 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 environ7. You may use timedatectl1 to change the settings of this file from the command line during runtime. Use systemd-firstboot1 to initialize the time zone on mounted (but not booted) system images. systemd1 tzset3 localtime3 timedatectl1 systemd-timedated.service8 systemd-firstboot1