I have recently been having a look at the pre-release versions of Firefox 3.6.4 which is due for Final Release this month and I find a major problem with logging into sites that need certain cookies.

I reported the finding here:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewto...68569#p9468569

and it appears that a 'bug' has already been filed:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=562198

This effect is seen in the Linux version but NOT the Windows version and it seem from comments in the bug report by Mozilla people that there needs to be more confirmation before it can be labelled as a 'blocker' for the next version of Firefox.

People on this forum might care to read the bug report and check the links to verify the problem and help prioritize the bug by voting for it.

Bill.

I wonder if this occurs on 64bit builds as well. The cause appears to be the way Unix time is stored as a 32bit integer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

I'll try building a 64-bit version later today and see if the bug works.

Ok, well, I tested it, and it seems to work just fine, with Slackware64 13.0, compiled Build6 from source. Tried the stuff in that thread, 'login', 'contact us', 'login' and it works without problems.

P.S. I tried it both without a new profile, and with a whole now profile and it makes no difference, it still works fine.

1 members found this post helpful.

That's good news for some of us. I'm still trying to figure out why someone would create a cookie that is set to expire so far in advance. That's 28 years from now. To logically think a person would still have this cookie on their machine for that long, and that the issuer would still be around is quite ambitious. I have 15 year old emails archived on disc, so maybe it's not so ludicrous. Then again, emails are far more important. Certainty not as regenerative as a cookie. Found a cookie from LQ that expires in Jan 2038, ~2 days before the dead line.

I wonder how other 32bit browsers on OS's that rely on Unix time are handling this.

This does seem to be related to the '2038 Bug' that affects UNIX (incl. Linux) on 32 bit.

The bug on Bugzilla is being actively worked on to narrow down the change that caused this with the pending new version of Firefox.

They are asking for others to reproduce the bug to give more emphasis for 'blocking' and therefore more rapid fixing of the issue.

It would be useful if a few 32-bit users in this forum could check this out and add a report (and a vote) to the Buzilla bug. There are a few test URLs given to help with this:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=562198

Bill.