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Firefox prints wrong date/time in the header/footer, shows 12/31/69

  • 4 replies
  • 13 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Steve

Steve
Steve
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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.

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)

Steve
Steve Question owner
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This started happening within the last few weeks on this box. Other boxes running Ubuntu 14 still works okay.

Modified by Steve

Steve
Steve Question owner
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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.

Steve
Steve Question owner
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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.

Steve
Steve Question owner
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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.