diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml
index fba67a37c79..cdc16c3ce5a 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/runtime.sgml
@@ -183,6 +183,15 @@ postgres$ <userinput>initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data</userinput>
    locale setting.  For details see <xref linkend="multibyte">.
   </para>
 
+  <para>
+   Non<literal>C</> and and non-<literal>POSIX</> locales rely on the
+   operating system's collation library for character set ordering.
+   This controls the ordering of keys stored in indexes.  For this reason,
+   a cluster cannot switch to an incompatible collation library version,
+   either through snapshot restore, binary streaming replication, or
+   <application>pg_upgrade</> run.
+  </para>
+
   <sect2 id="creating-cluster-mount-points">
    <title>Use of Secondary File Systems</title>