1127551 - sessionstore.js, recovery.js and previous.js all essentially empty.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[User Dderss]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0
Build ID: 20150122214805

Steps to reproduce:

Restarted the browser to prevent OOCVM (out of contiguous virtual memory) crashes through standard way as always did it.


Actual results:

FireFox has opened an absolutely new session. My session was totally wiped out. Not only "sessionstore.js", but also "recovery.js" and "previous.js" WERE ALL REWRITTEN and became of 118 KB size -- basically an empty session. Only "upgrade.js-[date]" files kept my session, but they are old, so it is mostly useless.

(Simultaneously, MenuWizard extension got autoupdated, but I am not sure if this had any role in what has happened.)

I survived this only because I have used FireFox since forever and from the back days numerously experienced my session being completely wiped out, so I had Cobian software backing up my profile folder every hour. So I have extracted manually "sessionstore.js" from my archive and got my session back, even though it was half hour outdated. 


Expected results:

Just normal restart with my session being opened.

Comment 1

[User Dderss]

Attachment: Inaccessible 'Recover previous session' and 'Recently closed windows' menu items in new session after FF35 wiping old one.png

After session got wiped out, users see highly important menu items to recover previous session/open closed windows greyed out and inaccessible.

__________________________________________________________________

Whatever the reason for this specific session store crash was, I would guess that besides "sessionstore.js" and "recovery.js" and "previous.js", FireFox have to store more session copies with modified extensions that in absolutely NO WAY would be ever rewritten automatically due to whatever has happened or an excessive restart in such situation.

As I wrote above, I manually set up such backups, so it is not about me, but some people could face similar situation and they will have their session lost forever.

Last year, session store mechanism has already became much more reliable than previously, and I have not used my back-up archives for about year and a half already until today.

Comment 2

[User Dderss]

The reason why my session got wiped out in the first place is beyond the scope of this bug, because it is about better maintaining *copies* of session and not allowing chain events completely rewriting/wiping out automatic back-ups.

However, just to be clear, here is code for restart that gets called if you either manually decides to do so, or if the extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/prevent-out-of-virtual-memo/) sees that maximum contiguous virtual memory approaches zero (it happens quite fast in 32-bit FireFox for Windows) and, hence, it is time to restart to avoid unnecessary crash:

____________________________________________________________________________
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/files/browse/293698/file/chrome/content/PreventOutOfVirtualMemoryCrashes.js#top

this.quit();
...
restartAPI: function()
{
var appStartup = Cc['@mozilla.org/toolkit/app-startup;1'].getService(Ci.nsIAppStartup);

appStartup.quit(Ci.nsIAppStartup.eRestart | Ci.nsIAppStartup.eAttemptQuit);
____________________________________________________________________________


It works perfectly fine for more than a year (and years before that in other extension from where it was taken), but, probably, today some incredibly rare/unique combination of bad circumstances has happened and it has caused FF35 to wipe out session and all of its copies in some unfortunate chain reaction.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Likely something other than Firefox is trashing your session files. Can you reproduce this if Cobian is NOT running?

Comment 4

[User Dderss]

Cobian physically can not trash session files; the application is only reads the source folder, nothing is written or updated there, ever. Besides, "volume shadow copying" it turned on, so Cobian does not even try to access locked files such as session; it only works with a shadow copy. 

Besides, whatever happens with Cobian, it is totally irrelevant to key issue of this bug: that FF *still* fundamentally unsafe in its methods of session handling. It has just couple of recent back-up files that all gets blank if FF had the latest file yanked and then trouble starting -- it creates empty session, and each start attempt it replaces useful session with the blank one, so just one-two start attempts all user's recent session data is lost FOREVER (as other backups are like month-old or older).

This bug can only be closed if Mozilla team would implement a better way to handle session. FireFox has to have hourly session saves with date/hour suffix that would not be erased automatically just because/during of failed start attempts -- unlike "previous"/"recovery".

Besides, it is super simple to check that the session was yanked -- versus latest saved session -- and ask user where he/she wants to recover it, instead of opening a blank session and blindly pushing it as "previous"/"recovery".

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

You are mistaken - for a program, eg Cobian, to cause problems it is not necessary for it to directly  physically alter a file. It's only necessary for it to have opened the file thus causing another program, eg Firefox, to fail in opening the file.  

1. Which reminds me, another possiblity is antivirus software - which AV program(s) do you have installed?

2. I'm not saying there might not be a problem in Firefox. I've experienced such a problem myself a couple years ago - see bug 903621 and all the other bugs cited there.  So you should check Tools | Error Console for errors related to memory usage and session storage.

3. Your bug report is lacking in certain details, such as what addons you have installed, and how many tabs are open?

Comment 6

[User Dderss]

Whole concept of Volume Shadow Copy method is that Cobian does not access actual file, does not even try; so the issue is not about locking/access conflict. Besides, at the time when I have restored my session from archive it was about half hour versus the time of the crash, and my schedule for autoback-up is once per hour. So at the moment of the crash Cobian was not trying to archive anything.

1. As to anti-virus software, I only have Microsoft Security Essentials enabled, nothing else.

2. There was nothing interesting in tools/errors or any logs at the time. And since I can not reproduce this situation, I would not be able to provide more details. So my guess is that his case is impossible to debug and reproduce, so the only way is just to update session management mechanic in a way similar to what I have proposed above.

3. I have a lot of tabs, as much as 670, and a lot of extensions -- though none of them are used as session managers (Tab Mix Plus option on that is off):

______________________________________________________________________________

Application Basics
------------------

Name: Firefox
Version: 41.0a1
Build ID: 20150528030206
Update Channel: nightly
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0
Multiprocess Windows: 0/1 (default: false)

Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days
---------------------------------

All Crash Reports

Extensions
----------

Name: About sessionstore
Version: 0.32.1-signed
Enabled: true
ID: aboutsessionstore@dt

Name: ADB Helper
Version: 0.7.4
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Adblock Plus
Version: 2.6.9.1-signed
Enabled: true
ID: {d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}

Name: Add Page Title To URL Bar
Version: 1.0.20
Enabled: true
ID: AddPageTitleToURLBar@ZXSpectrum

Name: Aptana Debugger
Version: 1.7.2
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: CacheViewer Continued
Version: 0.9.4.1
Enabled: true
ID: {30E08C68-889E-11E0-95EF-DA7E4824019B}

Name: Contextual Google Image Search
Version: 2.1.1
Enabled: true
ID: {D46504D3-4959-4351-AED6-C7EA276DBB93}

Name: DOM Inspector
Version: 2.0.15
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus
Version: 1.3.2.1-signed
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Flagfox
Version: 5.0.15.1-signed
Enabled: true
ID: {1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}

Name: Flash and Video Download
Version: 1.72
Enabled: true
ID: {bee6eb20-01e0-ebd1-da83-080329fb9a3a}

Name: GitHub Extension Installer
Version: 1.6.0.1-signed
Enabled: true
ID: {86054B0A-BD85-42F9-8E58-8794EC6F6EA1}

Name: Google search link fix
Version: 1.4.9.1-signed
Enabled: true
ID: jid0-XWJxt5VvCXkKzQK99PhZqAn7Xbg@jetpack

Name: Greasemonkey
Version: 3.1
Enabled: true
ID: {e4a8a97b-f2ed-450b-b12d-ee082ba24781}

Name: HighlightAll
Version: 1.7
Enabled: true
ID: {26FD1F83-A45B-4c74-AF5A-F2EE0EE4D691}

Name: Log Helper
Version: 0.6
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Menu Wizard
Version: 2.08
Enabled: true
ID: s3menu@wizard

Name: Multiple Tab Handler
Version: 0.8.2015030601
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Prevent Out Of Virtual Memory Crashes
Version: 1.0.11
Enabled: true
ID: PreventOutOfVirtualMemoryCrashes@ZXSpectrum

Name: Quick Context Search
Version: 1.5.2.1-signed
Enabled: true
ID: quickcontextsearch@pf

Name: Quick Search Bar
Version: 5.5.1
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Russian Hunspell spellchecking dictionary
Version: 1.0.20131101
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Save Image in Folder
Version: 1.3.16
Enabled: true
ID: {5e594888-3e8e-47da-b2c6-b0b545112f84}

Name: SQLite Manager
Version: 0.8.3
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Stealthy
Version: 2.5
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Tab Mix Plus
Version: 0.4.1.8pre.150317a1
Enabled: true
ID: {dc572301-7619-498c-a57d-39143191b318}

Name: Tab Scope
Version: 1.6.2
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: TinEye Reverse Image Search
Version: 1.1
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Valence
Version: 0.3.0
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Wiktionary and Google Translate
Version: 7.2
Enabled: true
ID: [e-mail]

Name: YouTube High Definition
Version: 38.3.1-signed
Enabled: true
ID: {7b1bf0b6-a1b9-42b0-b75d-252036438bdc}

Name: 1C:Enterprise Extension
Version: 1.8
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Add-on Compatibility Reporter
Version: 2.0.6.1-signed
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: BitComet Video Downloader
Version: 1.37
Enabled: false
ID: {B042753D-F57E-4e8e-A01B-7379A6D4CEFB}

Name: Click to Play per-element
Version: 0.3.1.1-signed
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Download Status Bar
Version: 12.3.0.1-signed
Enabled: false
ID: {6c28e999-e900-4635-a39d-b1ec90ba0c0f}

Name: Download Statusbar
Version: 0.9.10.1-signed
Enabled: false
ID: {D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}

Name: Firebug
Version: 2.0.9.1-signed
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: FireFTP
Version: 2.0.24.1-signed
Enabled: false
ID: {a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}

Name: Gecko Profiler
Version: 1.16.1
Enabled: false
ID: jid0-edalmuivkozlouyij0lpdx548bc@jetpack

Name: HTTPS-Everywhere
Version: 5.0.5
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Name: Media Hint
Version: 0.1.13.1
Enabled: false
ID: mediahint@jetpack

Name: NoScript
Version: 2.6.9.25.1-signed
Enabled: false
ID: {73a6fe31-595d-460b-a920-fcc0f8843232}

Name: NoSquint
Version: 2.1.9.1-signed
Enabled: false
ID: [e-mail]

Graphics
--------

Adapter Description: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series
Adapter Drivers: aticfx64 aticfx64 aticfx64 aticfx32 aticfx32 aticfx32 atiumd64 atidxx64 atidxx64 atiumdag atidxx32 atidxx32 atiumdva atiumd6a atitmm64
Adapter RAM: 2048
Asynchronous Pan/Zoom: none
ClearType Parameters: Gamma: 2200 Pixel Structure: R ClearType Level: 100 Enhanced Contrast: 50
Device ID: 0x6718
Direct2D Enabled: true
DirectWrite Enabled: true (6.2.9200.16571)
Driver Date: 11-20-2014
Driver Version: 14.501.1003.0
GPU #2 Active: false
GPU Accelerated Windows: 1/1 Direct3D 11 (OMTC)
Subsys ID: 00000000
Supports Hardware H264 Decoding: false
Vendor ID: 0x1002
WebGL Renderer: Google Inc. -- ANGLE (AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0)
windowLayerManagerRemote: true
AzureCanvasBackend: direct2d 1.1
AzureContentBackend: direct2d 1.1
AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo
AzureSkiaAccelerated: 0

Important Modified Preferences
------------------------------

accessibility.blockautorefresh: true
accessibility.typeaheadfind: true
accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar: 0
browser.cache.disk.capacity: 1048576
browser.cache.disk.filesystem_reported: 1
browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 640000
browser.cache.disk.smart_size.enabled: false
browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false
browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false
browser.cache.frecency_experiment: 3
browser.display.background_color: #CCCCCC
browser.download.folderList: 2
browser.download.importedFromSqlite: true
browser.download.manager.alertOnEXEOpen: true
browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete: false
browser.download.manager.showWhenStarting: false
browser.history_expire_days_min: 99999
browser.history_expire_days.mirror: 99999
browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction: 0
browser.places.createdSmartBookmarks: true
browser.places.importBookmarksHTML: false
browser.places.importDefaults: false
browser.places.leftPaneFolderId: -1
browser.places.migratePostDataAnnotations: false
browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion: 7
browser.places.updateRecentTagsUri: false
browser.search.openintab: true
browser.search.param.yahoo-fr: megaup
browser.search.param.yahoo-fr-cjkt: megaup
browser.search.useDBForOrder: true
browser.sessionstore.max_serialize_back: 30
browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo: 50
browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo: 20
browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID: 20150528030206
browser.startup.homepage: about:home
browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID: 20150528030206
browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone: 41.0a1
browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab: false
browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent: false
browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2: false
browser.tabs.warnOnClose: false
dom.apps.reset-permissions: true
dom.max_chrome_script_run_time: 40
dom.max_script_run_time: 0
dom.mozApps.used: true
dom.w3c_touch_events.expose: false
extensions.lastAppVersion: 41.0a1
font.default: sans-serif
font.internaluseonly.changed: false
font.language.group: x-cyrillic
font.name.sans-serif.ja: Arial Unicode MS
font.name.serif.x-cyrillic: Arial
font.name.serif.x-western: Tahoma
general.useragent.extra.firefox: Firefox/3.6;MEGAUPLOAD 1.0
general.useragent.extra.microsoftdotnet: (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
gfx.direct3d.last_used_feature_level_idx: 0
gfx.direct3d.prefer_10_1: true
keyword.URL: http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=megaup&p=
media.gmp-eme-adobe.lastUpdate: 1431542601
media.gmp-eme-adobe.version: 9
media.gmp-gmpopenh264.lastUpdate: 1431542601
media.gmp-gmpopenh264.version: 1.4
media.gmp-manager.buildID: 20150528030206
media.gmp-manager.lastCheck: 1432886348
media.video-queue.default-size: 15
network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true
network.http.keep-alive.timeout: 900
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server: 11
network.predictor.cleaned-up: true
places.database.lastMaintenance: 1432837057
places.history.expiration.max_pages: 9999999
places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 9999999
places.history.expiration.transient_optimal_database_size: 139549408
places.last_vacuum: 1300678081
plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types: application/pdf
plugin.importedState: true
plugin.state.flash: 1
plugin.state.npatgpc: 1
plugin.state.npqtplugin: 2
plugin.state.npvizzedrgr: 0
plugin.state.npvlc: 2
plugin.state.npwlpg: 1
print.print_bgcolor: false
print.print_bgimages: false
print.print_command:
print.print_downloadfonts: true
print.print_evenpages: true
print.print_in_color: true
print.print_margin_bottom: 0.5
print.print_margin_left: 0.5
print.print_margin_right: 0.5
print.print_margin_top: 0.5
print.print_oddpages: true
print.print_orientation: 0
print.print_pagedelay: 500
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print.print_paper_height: 11,00
print.print_paper_size_type: 1
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print.print_paper_width: 8,50
print.print_printer: Brother MFC-990CW Printer
print.print_reversed: false
print.print_scaling: 1,00
print.print_shrink_to_fit: true
print.print_to_file: false
print.printer_Brother_MFC-990CW_Printer.print_bgcolor: false
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End Date: 1419961702706
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Name: New Tab Data
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Comment 7

[User Dderss]

Attachment: FF 38 -- most of the session yanked, much smaller recovery files.png

Comment 8

[User Dderss]

Attachment: FF 38 -- full session recovery files as restored from archive.png

Comment 9

[User Dderss]

I just had another incident of the same type.

This time around my session was mostly yanked, but not completely: as it can be seen from one of the two latest attached screenshots, my session was not fully "nulled" to 118 KB, the files were about 773 KB. Those are secondary smaller groups that survived this. Main group with the most of tabs, though, was gone.

Just as in the previous case, "Restore previous session" and "Restore recently closed windows" FF UI options were greyed out, and no wonder, as you can see that ALL of recovery/recent/bak files are only 772 KB, there is nothing to recover and restore.

As it was before, I was able to recover by full session from the archive I has set up. Full session size is 2616 KB.

FireFox should not be this quick to rewrite all of the recovery/recent/bak files with much smaller session file, because users who do not have archiving set up would loose most/all of their data in such cases of weird corruption that can happen.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

1. Nothing was in  Tools | Error Console?
2. 773k is not a trivial size sesion file. What are the contents?

Comment 11

[User Dderss]

1. Since this bug is restart related, browser console never keeps anything even if there would be an error. Or do you mean some other console, because there is no menu item that is called "Error Console" exactly?

2. As I wrote, 773KB is few groups with tabs I use rarely, and it has survived the incident. Main group of tabs was yanked, though. I looks like the issue is related with restart/shutdown process where FF during quit procedure has closed main window, which is the biggest group of tabs, and then saved the session as if user WANTED to close the window for good, not the browser as whole.

Then somehow this mostly yanked session got immediately copied to recovery/recent files, so the session got mangled everywhere, and user can not recover "closed window" any more, nor recover previous session -- as everything is rewritten, as the attached screenshot shows.

_______________________________________________________________________________

From here I see two issues:

1) FireFox's restart/quit procedure is still not reliable enough to not confuse closing main window and restarting whole browser. As result, it can mix the two and save session with main window killed. However, this is not really subject of this bug, as even if it was only that, it would not be so critical (it would be inconvenient to recover closed window or session, but it could be manageable);

2) Somehow FireFox is too quick to rewrite recovery/restore with the latest session -- at least in cases of corrupt session file if it appears in cases like #1 -- so user does not have chance to restore it to the latest normal previous state. FireFox should have more current backup files, with some of them protected from being automatically rewritten during the start of FF.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to User Dderss from comment #11)
> 1. Since this bug is restart related, browser console never keeps anything
> even if there would be an error. Or do you mean some other console, because
> there is no menu item that is called "Error Console" exactly?

Then simply check the error console BEFORE you restart or shutdown Firefox.
And also periodically check the session files.


> 2. As I wrote, 773KB is few groups with tabs I use rarely, and it has
> survived the incident. 

If rarely used, then why would these survive, intact, usable, when others which are more recently used did not survive?  That, I think is a key question.  I think if you checked error console we might have a chance at finding out.

Comment 13

[User Dderss]

1. Since something bad happens _during_ restart, not before it, it makes no sense to check the console. Besides, full four months between incidents indicate that checking console for that is not feasible.

2. As I explained earlier, as part of restarting FireFox has to close main window, which is one of the groups of the tabs -- biggest one. Other groups of tabs are not within this window, so when the window got yanked, other groups of tabs were not touched, and the session was saved with them kept intact -- but, of course, without main window with the most number of tabs. 

This case is pretty understandable in terms of what needs to be done to avoid at least irrecoverable loss of session data. So the only question here is how to get to people who deal with recover/previous session management so they could update the mechanism correspondingly, as proposed.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Still seeing this a year later?

Comment 15

[User Dderss]

This bug happened to me in non-e10s mode, and I long do not use that, so I can not definitely say if it is still an issue. However, since e10s mode is finally default for FireFox, it is of lesser significance anyway.

Also, it looks like since last year FireFox has implemented time out limit on how long exiting can go: while previously it could last for many minutes, sometimes forever, now it is still painfully long, but it never gets to the point of this bug (where you close your main window, and FF rewrites the session store without your main tabs, still crashed in the end and effectively wipes out user session).

Now FireFox still crashes during exit absolutely every time, but it causes things like inability for opened YouTube video to remember its last playback position, not the type of behaviour as this bug.

Comment 16

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard, please open separate bug for exit crashes