Timothy Sample <samplet@ngyro.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Kei Kebreau <kkebreau@posteo.net> writes:
>
>> Marius Bakke <mbakke@fastmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> I'm not sure what we should do about it.  Thoughts?
>>>
>>> Kei: Does it work if you 'echo Your/Timezone > /etc/timezone' ?
>>> Alternatively, you could make /etc/localtime a symbolic link to
>>> $tzdata/share/zoneinfo/Your/Timezone, though that will not persist a
>>> reboot.
>>
>> I can confirm that both of these methods work, so crude work-arounds
>> include
>>
>>   1.  Setting the system's configured time zone in /etc/timezone
>
> This is my vote for two reasons.  First, it seems more elegant.  If I
> want to know the timezone name, I should look it up directly, and not
> chase symlinks around looking for some canonical timezone file.  I think
> this is the closest thing to a “standard way to get the name of the
> system timezone” <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/35746#9> (here,
> “standard” means “well, I guess at least Gentoo does it”).  Second, it
> is a one-liner for us:
>
> From ad931895edae97e2d6d77542fcbe8dc793f193f0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Timothy Sample <samplet@ngyro.com>
> Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 10:04:58 -0400
> Subject: [PATCH] system: Write the timezone to /etc/timezone.
>
> * gnu/system.scm (operating-system-etc-service): Write the operating
> system timezone to /etc/timezone.
>
> Fixes <https://bugs.gnu.org/35746>.
> ---
>  gnu/system.scm | 1 +
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
>
> diff --git a/gnu/system.scm b/gnu/system.scm
> index 01be1243fe..75ac0632bb 100644
> --- a/gnu/system.scm
> +++ b/gnu/system.scm
> @@ -716,6 +716,7 @@ fi\n")))
>         ;; to certain networks.  Some discussion at
>         ;; https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2017-09/msg00037.html
>         ("hostname" ,(plain-file "hostname" (operating-system-host-name os)))
> +       ("timezone" ,(plain-file "timezone" (operating-system-timezone os)))
>         ("localtime" ,(file-append tzdata "/share/zoneinfo/"
>                                    (operating-system-timezone os)))
>         ("sudoers" ,(operating-system-sudoers-file os))))))
> -- 
> 2.22.0
>
>
> Thoughts?

Looks good to me.  Perhaps leave a comment that Glib uses this file to
figure out the current timezone?

Though I notice Debian 10 creates /etc/timezone too, so maybe we just
missed a FHS update somewhere.