- to the user. It should contain a single
- newline-terminated line consisting of a time zone
- identifier such as
- <literal>Europe/Berlin</literal>. The file
- <filename>/etc/localtime</filename> corresponds with
- <filename>/etc/timezone</filename> and contains the
- binary time zone data for the time zone. These files
- should always be changed simultaneously and kept in
- sync.</para>
+ to the user. It should be an absolute symbolic link
+ with a destination of <filename>/usr/share/zoneinfo/</filename>,
+ fallowed by a time zone identifier such as
+ <literal>Europe/Berlin</literal> or <literal>Etc/UTC</literal>.
+ The resulting link should point to the corresponding binary
+ <citerefentry><refentrytitle>tzfile</refentrytitle><manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry>
+ time zone data for the configured time zone.</para>
+
+ <para>As the time zone identifier is extracted from the name of
+ the target of <filename>/etc/localtime</filename> this file may
+ not be a normal file or hardlink.</para>