Closed Bug 1554040 Opened 6 years ago Closed 5 months ago

Toggling "Run in Private Windows" on/off erases container cookies

Categories

(WebExtensions :: General, defect, P2)

Product:
WebExtensions
Component:
General
Version:
67 Branch
Type:
defect

Tracking

(firefox67 affected, firefox68 affected, firefox69 affected)

Status:
RESOLVED INVALID
Tracking Flags:
Tracking Status
firefox67 --- affected
firefox68 --- affected
firefox69 --- affected

People

(Reporter: z764c86y, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:67.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/67.0

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Update to Firefox 67
  2. Open a Personal container tab and login to a gmail account
  3. Go to about:addons and click on Firefox Multi-Account Containers
  4. Set "Run in Private Windows" from Allow to Don't Allow
  5. Observe that all of your multi-container tabs disappear from the tab bar
  6. Re-open a Personal container tab and check gmail: you're no longer logged in

Note: a site that is set to always open in a particular container will still open in that container.

Actual results:

Accounts in all containers are logged out.

Expected results:

Accounts in different containers are still logged in.

Good afternoon Eric,

Thanks for the details. I was able to reproduce the bug on the following versions:

nightly 68.0a1 (2019-05-28) (64-bit)
release 66.0.5 (64-bit)
Beta 67.0b9 (64-bit)

I've chosen a component. If you consider that there's another component that's more proper for this case you may change it.

Best regards, Flor.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
status-firefox67: --- → affected
status-firefox68: --- → affected
status-firefox69: --- → affected
Component: Untriaged → Tabbed Browser
Ever confirmed: true
Component: Tabbed Browser → Untriaged
Product: Firefox → WebExtensions
See Also: → 1549013
Component: Untriaged → General
Assignee: nobody → mixedpuppy
Priority: -- → P1

Jonathan, I'm not clear what happens when the privacy.userContext.* prefs for the contextual identities api are unset when an extension is disabled. Can you provide any insight into what is happening with the STR in comment 0?

Flags: needinfo?(jkt)

Yeah we have had this before with Bug 1549013 and others.
The code in extensions essentially sets the prefs when there is only one addon https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/03853a6e87c4a9405fce1de49e5d03b9e7a7a274/toolkit/components/extensions/parent/ext-contextualIdentities.js#117-146

So when the last extension is removed, we reset these back to the browsers default which in stable is containers is disabled.
The ContextualIdentityService when it notices that the container enabled pref is changed to false, wipes all data: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/components/contextualidentity/ContextualIdentityService.jsm#159-170

This is obviously heavy handed but Containers still aren't enabled in default which means when disabled we need to clear all data for them.

This is essentially a duplicate of Bug 1549204.

Flags: needinfo?(jkt)
Summary: Toggling "Run in Private Windows" on/off erases multi-account container cookies → Toggling "Run in Private Windows" on/off erases container cookies

Lets leave this open and pursue a product decision on bug 1549204. If we enable for all users as suggested in bug 1549204 comment 7, then we'll dup this. If not, we should probably look at an additional flag on whether any extensions using the api are installed even if disabled. When the last is uninstalled, only then unset the pref that causes the data erasure.

Depends on: 1549204
Assignee: mixedpuppy → nobody
Priority: P1 → P2

I can trigger this bug with Multi-account containers, but I can’t reproduce it with Tab Center Reborn.

Severity: normal → S2

I cannot reproduce this bug anymore. Bug 1549204 probably fixed it.

Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 5 months ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
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