Comment 0 for bug 1650688

On a system running UC16, the file /etc/localtime is a link that points to /etc/writable/localtime.

On a freshly installed system, /etc/writable/localtime is a fully-qualified link that points at /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC.

If timedatectl is used to set the timezone to something else, timedated updates the localtime symbolic link with a relative path to the zoneinfo directory, which results in an invalid link.

$ sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Detroit

$ sudo timedatectl
      Local time: Fri 2016-12-16 18:18:49 EST
  Universal time: Fri 2016-12-16 23:18:49 UTC
        RTC time: Fri 2016-12-16 23:18:49
       Time zone: America/Detroit (EST, -0500)
 Network time on: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
 RTC in local TZ: no

$ ls -l /etc/writable/localtime
/etc/writable/localtime --> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Detroit

admin@localhost:/etc/writable$ date
Fri Dec 16 23:20:07 UTC 2016

I'm running the latest core snap from the candidate channel which contains snapd 2.18.1. Hardware details and/or more debug information can be supplied on request.

See 'man 3 timezone' and 'man timedatectl' for more details.