firefox gets wrong timezone on NixOS

[sg-qwt]

firefox doesn't have correct timezone on NixOS

Steps To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. NixOS has correctly set timezone with time.timeZone = "Asia/Shanghai"

2. run date and timedatectl all return correct timezone

3. open Chromium and test timezone with https://webbrowsertools.com/timezone/ timezone is correct

4. open Firefox and test timezone with https://webbrowsertools.com/timezone/ timezone is wrong, in my case it shows GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
   (doesn't matter if it's firefox or firefox-beta, privacy.resistFingerprinting is false)

5. run firefox with TZ set works, eg TZ=Asia/Shanghai /nix/store/pnm2qqfwpg7gqvybp2p0cghci3nm94my-firefox-114.0b7/bin/firefox, visit https://webbrowsertools.com/timezone/ and timezone is correct now

6. my observation is Firefox needs TZ explicit set, which NixOS doesn't

Additional context

Possibly related to #23053

[ralismark]

Had the same issue, I noticed it from discord and facebook showing times in UTC. Setting TZ=:/etc/localtime also fixed this.

I suspect this is a recent (last few weeks) issue, since I feel like it was fine before. I might try bisect it later tonight.

[vcunat]

I can't reproduce the issue in firefox on current nixpkgs master (f891c1c), at least when running NixOS 23.05. ($TZ is not set when I start up shell.) EDIT: I'm GMT+2 now.

[kirillrdy]

I can reproduce using that commit

git checkout f891c1c65e31a7ebebb57cbedb3a63d0012146c1
nix-build -A firefox
./result/bin/firefox https://webbrowsertools.com/timezone

[kirillrdy]

works if sandbox is disabled

MOZ_DISABLE_CONTENT_SANDBOX=1 ./result/bin/firefox https://webbrowsertools.com/timezone/

[mobsenpai]

Set the TZ = "${config.time.timeZone}"; environment variable

[mobsenpai]

Set the TZ = "${config.time.timeZone}"; environment variable

I can just manually set this but knowing that It worked in the previous update my mind just don't allow me to add another line to my config, so for now until they add it in the browser or soemthing I will just launch firefox using TZ=mytimezone firefox

[kirillrdy]

with firefox 115 timezone issue is back ... I guess until we hear back from upstream workaround is to set TZ

[sg-qwt]

with firefox 115 timezone issue is back ... I guess until we hear back from upstream workaround is to set TZ

(if (lib.versionAtLeast version "115") then icu else icu72)
115 is not pinned with icu72.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1839287
@mweinelt Until upstream fixes the issue(I doubt that's gonna be any time soon), shall we just pin icu72 for every firefox on-wards or forget about icu72 and create a TZ wrapper instead?

[kirillrdy]

pinned

firefox 115 requires icu73, so it's either TZ=":/etc/localtime" or wait for upstream

[S-NA]

If it is a sandbox issue, would not using security.sandbox.content.read_path_whitelist in about:config be a workaround to this? I cannot reproduce the issue for some reason to test.

[kirillrdy]

If it is a sandbox issue, would not using security.sandbox.content.read_path_whitelist in about:config be a workaround to this? I cannot reproduce the issue for some reason to test.

for read_path_whitelist ? can we set it programmatically ?

as for reproducing the issue, I have nixos-rebuild build-vm --flake github:kirillrdy/dotfiles/firefox#tsutenkaku that you can try if you wish

setting MOZ_DISABLE_CONTENT_SANDBOX=1 fixes the issue, hence why I am confident its sandbox related

but whats strange is

1. there are a few people that can not reproduce the issue
2. when i run with MOZ_SANDBOX_LOGGING=1
   I get

Sandbox: Recording mapping /nix/store/lyw3dwzv3wpvklmm5ky3zw3zxvx3nmvs-tzdata-2023c/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Melbourne -> /etc/localtime
Sandbox: Recording mapping /etc/zoneinfo/Australia/Melbourne -> /etc/localtime
Sandbox: Recording mapping /nix/store/lyw3dwzv3wpvklmm5ky3zw3zxvx3nmvs-tzdata-2023c/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Melbourne -> /etc/localtime

so maybe some sort of (reliable 🤣 ) race condition, hopefully upstream can shine some light on the issue

[ralismark]

If it is a sandbox issue, would not using security.sandbox.content.read_path_whitelist in about:config be a workaround to this? I cannot reproduce the issue for some reason to test.

setting security.sandbox.content.read_path_whitelist to /etc/localtime,/etc/static/zoneinfo,/etc/static/zoneinfo/,/etc/zoneinfo,/etc/zoneinfo/,/nix/store/jhgh02lyizd1kyl71brvc01ygsmgi40a-tzdata-2023c/share/zoneinfo/,/nix/store/jhgh02lyizd1kyl71brvc01ygsmgi40a-tzdata-2023c/share/zoneinfo,/nix/store/9sv16r56wlhx39ms050ksi2axc1i5zn2-etc/etc,/nix/store/9sv16r56wlhx39ms050ksi2axc1i5zn2-etc/etc/ (basically, every single path that should be relevant) still shows the wrong timezone on https://webbrowsertools.com/timezone/

[mateusvmv]

Workaround, setting the TZ environment variable:

{ pkgs, ... }:
let
        patched-firefox = pkgs.symlinkJoin {
                name= "patched-firefox";
                paths = [ pkgs.firefox ];
                buildInputs = [ pkgs.makeWrapper ];
                postBuild = ''
                        wrapProgram "$out/bin/firefox" --set TZ /etc/localtime
                '';
        };
in
{
        home.packages = with pkgs; [
                patched-firefox
        ];
}

[mobsenpai]

Wth it's still not done yet?

[mweinelt]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1848615

wontfix in 116, affected for 117/118, so an upstream fix will likely arrive in a 117 point release. Firefox 117.0 is due early next week.

[kirillrdy]

looks like it will be fixed in 119118

[mweinelt]

Fix targeted for 117.0.1.