Firefox prints wrong date/time in the header/footer, shows 12/31/69
System: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
Firefox: 53.0.2 (32-bit)
The system has the correct date and time. But for some reason Firefox thinks it's 1969. In Firefox, The footer or header field is &D "Print preview" and "Print to pdf" show "12/31/69" for the date. A few months ago this same system was working correctly. Date is correct on another box running Ubuntu 14, and 2 boxes running Win10 are correct. I followed the procedure described in posting #1157828 and no help:
[CNT] [SFT] [k] open console type var d=new Date(); console.log(d.toLocaleString()); return is 5/23/2017, 4:15:28 PM which is correct
(But this is just showing the system time, which is already known to be correct.) I tried moving the &D code between header/footer, comes out wrong in either place. It was working correctly a few months ago, and I've changed very little on this system in terms of settings etc. Prints to pdf were correct date in January; earliest wrong date is in a file 5/15/17. For some reason, Firefox is capturing the wrong date and time, from somewhere. And not getting the system date/time. I have searched quite a bit on the help forum and cannot find a fix for this. Any help would be appreciated.
Modified by Steve
All Replies (4)
This started happening within the last few weeks on this box. Other boxes running Ubuntu 14 still works okay.
Modified by Steve
Update.. Here is what I've tried so far:
- Uninstall and reinstall Firefox (no change)
- Open Firefox in a different desktop environment LXDE (no change)
- Erased prefs.js and prefs_baksup.js, re-created bv Firefox (no change)
The correct date/time is acquired by other software on the same system such as
- Libreoffice calc inserts correct date for TODAY()
- Libreoffice writer inserts correct date for header field entry
I know that 12/31/69 is the default Unix date when zero is entered, apparently somehow Firefox is acquiring "0" as the system date/time for print. However, based on the code in the original post, it is getting the correct system date/time, but somehow it's not going into the print headers.
Update #2 Here's what I've tried:
Using the LXDE desktop environment for all of this, to make sure it's not a KDE5 issue. Uninstalled Firefox, deleted entire folder at $HOME/.mozilla, re-installed Firefox. Went to 53.0.3 32-bit. No change; Date in footer still shows 12/31/69.
It works correctly on the other box running Ubuntu 14.0, but that is the 64-bit version of Firefox, and this is 32-bit that is having the problem.
Tried using the Chromium web browser. Print/Save to pdf file. The date in the header is correct (5/25/2017) when using Chromium.
Because it works correctly from Chromium, I feel that this is likely a Firefox problem, rather than something in the Linux distro.
I would very much like to fix this because I prefer using the Firefox browser that I am more familiar with. I feel that I have done the proper due diligence to run diagnostics (original post) to get information about the issue. I would very much appreciate it if any of you could help with this.
This is a Firefox bug. It's reported and discussed here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1362817
They've confirmed it occurs on version 53.0 for Linux. Only on the 32-bit version. Does not occur on 64-bit.
FF54 is also affected. A fix has not yet been determined.