1554167 - Opening Firefox version 67.0 64 bit displays a blank home page instead of saved home page.

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Data Sanitization, defect, P1)

Description

[glenn.edelstein]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.169 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Opening firefox program to saved home page

Actual results:

Blank page.

Expected results:

Saved home page should of opened ( Google.com) Tried changing to different home page but same results occurred. Only started happening with recent upgrade to version 67.0

Comment 1

[[:philipp]]

i am confirming this bug on the basis of seeing multiple reports on support venues:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/firefox?owner=all&tagged=bug1554167&show=all
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bs0wxt/startup_page_bug/
https://www.camp-firefox.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=127901

affected people are commonly linking this issue to clearing "active logins" on shutdown in the privacy & security settings.

Comment 4

[Gingerbread Man]

:johannh & :baku It looks like one of your patches may have caused this. Please have a look.

Comment 5

[Andrea Marchesini [:baku]]

Do you have a regression range? It would be extremely useful. Thanks.

Comment 6

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to Andrea Marchesini [:baku] from comment #5)

Do you have a regression range? It would be extremely useful. Thanks.

No, because I wasn't able to reproduce the issue. It's possible Firefox needs some active logins to clear for this to crop up. I just had a look at Data Sanitization bugs with status-firefox67 either fixed or verified and set the needinfo flags based on that:
bug 1524674 — seems like the most likely suspect, since it's specifically about clearing stuff on shutdown
bug 1525763
bug 1532203
bug 1523696
bug 1509638

Comment 7

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Hello, Glenn! I have attempted to reproduce this issue, but I could not. Can you still reproduce this issue? Is it constant?
If yes, can you try it while in a new, fresh profile? You have the steps here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Managing-profiles#w_starting-the-profile-manager

Thank you for your contribution!

Comment 8

[ffthbugs]

@Bodea Daniel : have you seen my comment here : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1553239#c2
I give a detailed procedure to reproduce the issue.

Comment 9

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

I can't reproduce this and I can't draw any connection to data sanitization here. It would be useful to have access to an affected profile or at least someone to record a regression range on such profile. Until then the team that is responsible for this component should take a look at the bug. If this ends up being an issue with data sanitization after all, we're happy to help.

Andrei, can you make sure this ends up in the right hands?

Thank you 🥳

Comment 12

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to Gingerbread Man from comment #6)

I wasn't able to reproduce the issue.

For what it's worth, I managed to reproduce this a couple of times, but it took somewhere between 12–36 attempts before it cropped up once. I for one won't be able to find a regression range at that rate.

STR

1. Brand new profile.
2. about:preferences#home
   Homepage and new windows: Custom URLs
   https://duckduckgo.com
3. about:preferences#privacy
   [x] Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed
   Firefox will: Use custom settings for history
   [x] Clear history when Firefox closes
   [Settings…] [x] every item checked — N.B.: bug 1554747 suggests this isn't necessary
4. Lauch Firefox. If you don't get a blank page instead of the chosen homepage, exit and retry.

Comment 13

[ffthbugs]

(In reply to Gingerbread Man from comment #12)

For what it's worth, I managed to reproduce this a couple of times, but it took somewhere between 12–36 attempts before it cropped up once. I for one won't be able to find a regression range at that rate.
Have you try to change proxy settings ? Choosing "No proxy", or - better - "manual configuration", can help.

Comment 14

[ffthbugs]

Have you try to change proxy settings ? Choosing "No proxy", or - better - "manual configuration", can help.

Comment 15

[[:philipp]]

bug 1532110 looks similar - maybe there's an edge-case that wasn't covered by the fix there?

Comment 17

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to ffthbugs from comment #14)

Have you try to change proxy settings ? Choosing "No proxy",

In bug 1553239, comment 2 you said either "No proxy" or "Use system proxy settings". The latter is the default, so I didn't touch those settings (especially since no one else mentioned proxy settings).

Adding "No proxy" to the mix seems to make it easier to reproduce: I hit the bug in 3–12 attempts on average. I tried finding the regression range with as many as 20 retries per build, but it was a lot of trouble and I don't trust the result. I think someone else should give it a go.

or - better - "manual configuration", can help.

I don't have a proxy to use.

Comment 18

[lmeuerer]

Please have a look at the description in bug 1554747. I gave a simple step-by-step instruction that always works to trigger the bug to appear.

Comment 19

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

I attempted to reproduce this issue with the steps in the description of bug 1554747, more exactly, after having created a profile without opening it, setting a prefs.js file (with the required prefs) inside the profile folder, and then opening it once to set the homepage. On the second open of the latest release version, it reproduces. If I attempted to run mozregression using the profile created above, the issue would not reproduce, so a regression could not be made.

Furthermore, if I tried to reproduce the issue on Beta v68.0b4 or Nightly v69.0a1, it did reproduce.

Comment 20

[lmeuerer]

(In reply to Bodea Daniel [:danibodea] from comment #19)

Furthermore, if I tried to reproduce the issue on Beta v68.0b4 or Nightly v69.0a1, it did reproduce.

I can confirm this. I tried yesterday Firefox nightly 69.0a1 (2019-05-27) x86_64 on both Fedora 30 and Windows 8.1, and the problem was reproduceable.

Comment 21

[ffthbugs]

(In reply to Gingerbread Man from comment #17)

Adding "No proxy" to the mix seems to make it easier to reproduce: I hit the bug in 3–12 attempts on average. I tried finding the regression range with as many as 20 retries per build, but it was a lot of trouble and I don't trust the result. I think someone else should give it a go.

Ok, done it. Here is the pushlog. As said here, it is necessary to start Firefox two times to reproduce the issue. To be sure, I started Firefox three times for good builds, but I needed to start Firefox more than two times for bad builds only once, for "autoland build built on 2019-02-21 12:00:47.587000, revision 25397a6f". So I really trust the result.

Comment 22

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to ffthbugs from comment #21)

Here is the pushlog.

Thank you for making the effort. That points to bug 1524200 which is about Data Sanitization cleanup on exit, so that's really promising. Though all the tracking flags say wontfix which is really confusing.

Comment 23

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]: Looks like a relatively recent regression affecting existing users custom home pages upgrading to 67 with network.cookie.lifetimePolicy=2 and privacy.sanitize.sanitizeOnShutdown=true

That specific push of https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/25397a6f8c4f5f96c0f669921a178f15aa4b05b3 landed in 67 as per bug 1524200 comment 18

Comment 24

[daveo]

There is a workaround. I found that if Firefox is open to any page or even a blank page, then I click on a shortcut link from the desktop, it opens correctly in a new tab. Obviously something is not right but it does work and the link is open and correct.

Comment 25

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

I have a patch that fixes this!

Comment 26

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Attachment: Bug 1554167 - Remove pending shutdown sanitization immediately after shutdown sanitization finishes. r=mak!,baku

In https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/25397a6f8c4f#l1.35 we added an early return to
the SanitizeOnShutdown function to avoid cleaning principals by permission if the user had
set their preferences to clear all storage on shutdown anyway. This unfortunately ended
the function execution before it would call removePendingSanitization("shutdown"); later on
and thus remove the pending shutdown sanitization (which, in fact, had completed successfully earlier).

The result is that the shutdown sanitization would be left dangling and run again on next startup,
where, for reasons I don't fully understand, it would race and conflict with loading the home page,
if that home page was from web content.

The solution is to remove the pending shutdown sanitization immediately after the sanitization is done.

As far as I can see there was never really a point in having it happen after session principal
cleanup finished, since in case of a crash it would not run the principal cleanup again next startup,
just the shutdown cleanup.

For good measure I also moved the new tab container sanitization to happen earlier in this function,
to prevent it from dangling as well.

Comment 27

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/306934f9f182
Remove pending shutdown sanitization immediately after shutdown sanitization finishes. r=mak,baku

Comment 28

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

I don't think this particularly affects Trailhead but we may want to get it into a 67 dot release after Trailhead goes out.
Johann, please let me know if you disagree about 67.0.1.

Comment 29

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/306934f9f182

Comment 30

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Including this in a dot release sounds appropriate to me, but yeah I'm okay if you don't want to take it for Trailhead :)

I'll file uplift requests...

Comment 31

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Comment on attachment 9068535 [details]
Bug 1554167 - Remove pending shutdown sanitization immediately after shutdown sanitization finishes. r=mak!,baku

Beta/Release Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: Custom home page is broken with clearing data on shutdown settings applied
• Is this code covered by automated tests?: No
• Has the fix been verified in Nightly?: No
• Needs manual test from QE?: Yes
• If yes, steps to reproduce: I can reliably reproduce given the steps in comment 12. Without the fix, it should show a blank page on startup, with the fix, the custom homepage should be shown.
• List of other uplifts needed: None
• Risk to taking this patch: Low
• Why is the change risky/not risky? (and alternatives if risky): This is a relatively well understood patch that moves a few lines of code in shutdown sanitization to happen earlier than before (because we added code that returned before they could be run). Slight risk is that we can't really have automated tests for this, so QA would be good.
• String changes made/needed: None

Comment 33

[Stephane]

Hi !

Sorry but I am new here, my apologies if I do something wrong...
For me it is not resolved.
I still have the issue with Firefox 67, and I use it with KDE Neon 5.15.5.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1260806#answer-1227093

Comment 34

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to Stephane from comment #33)

I still have the issue with Firefox 67

You can see the various statuses in the Firefox Tracking Flags section at the top of this page. This is fixed in Firefox 69. Beta uplift has been requested, so it'll probably be fixed in Firefox 68 as well before long. There's also talk of uplifting to a future 67.0.x.

Comment 35

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

I have verified this fix by attempting to reproduce the duplicate's steps (bug 1554747). More exactly:

1. Create a new profile using Profile Manager, but do not open it.
2. Create a prefs.js file in the profile folder with the following entries:
   user_pref("network.cookie.lifetimePolicy", 2);
   user_pref("privacy.sanitize.sanitizeOnShutdown", true);
3. Start Firefox.
4. Set Homepage as a random "Custom URL..." in Preferences.
5. Close Firefox (the problems do not occur when you start Firefox for the first time).

The previous result: The homepage would not open, a blank page would be displayed.
The current result: The homepage is properly loaded and displayed.

The fix appears to be valid. It does not reproduce anymore in the latest Nightly v69.0a1, but it does still reproduce in Bera v68.0b6. This issue was verified in Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04.2.
I won't be removing the "qe-verify+" flag in the event of the uplift. Thank you!

Comment 36

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Comment on attachment 9068535 [details]
Bug 1554167 - Remove pending shutdown sanitization immediately after shutdown sanitization finishes. r=mak!,baku

sanitizer fix for 68.0b7

Comment 37

[Alexandru Michis [:malexandru]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/736e8d1c1c44

Comment 38

[jlillis]

FYI: I was able to resolve the issue on my PC, but unfortunately do not know what was causing it in the first place.

With browser open, choose to restart with addons disabled. Then selected Restart option. Then selected refresh Firefox option. Issue resolved.

Prior to trying this, I did delete all addons. I tried selecting the Firefox homepage as the start page (Was on blank page prior) and not even the Firefox homepage would load on opening a browser.

I've put all the settings back the way I had them prior to this issue showing up and it's still functioning correctly now that I've done the refresh step.

Comment 39

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

Comment on attachment 9068535 [details]
Bug 1554167 - Remove pending shutdown sanitization immediately after shutdown sanitization finishes. r=mak!,baku

Approving for 67.0.2 given the large number of duplicates and the fact that QA verified the uplift in beta, thanks.

Comment 40

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/rev/391c16d79dcc

Comment 41

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

The fix is also verified in Beta v68.0b8 and Release v67.0.2 on Windows 10. Thank you.

Comment 42

[j.alberto.vc]

In firefox for linux if i use private browser , i got default home page instead the one i configured, in normal browser i got the expected home page

Comment 43

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Log a new bug for your issue. Not sure if it's valid, tho. The same behavior appears in Windows. I expect it may be intended.