Making /etc/localtime a symlink?

[Nils Philippsen]

On Sat, 2006-04-01 at 15:12 +0200, Stefan Neufeind wrote:
> I was wondering if, instead of currently making /etc/localtime a copy of
> the timezone to use, it would be a good idea to actually make it a
> symlink. In the (unlikely) event that information for a timezone would
> chance, updates would take effect automatically.
> 
> initial /etc/localtime: part of glibc
> e.g. /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin: part of tzdata
> 
> So imho this would involve bundling /etc/localtime as a symlink in
> glibc, a dep to tzdata (there is a dep from glibc-common to tzdata) and
> adjusting installer etc. to not make copies but create symlinks.
> 
> What do others think?

I think it would be better if tzdata would copy the updated localtime
file from /usr/share/zoneinfo/... (via %post) when upgrading depending
on ZONE in /etc/sysconfig/clock. To allow custom timezones (real
customized tz files or timezones the config tools don't know about) I
propose to use ZONE=custom upon which neither tzdata nor
system-config-date would touch /etc/localtime. Petr, what do you think?

Nils
-- 
     Nils Philippsen    /    Red Hat    /    nphilipp at redhat.com
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