1827994 - Quit from linux dock closes browser windows individually (and window restore is capped by browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo)

Status: NEW

(Core :: Widget: Gtk, defect, P3)

Description

[jdien07]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/112.0

Steps to reproduce:

on Pop!_OS 22.04 (an Ubuntu distro)

downloaded new build of Firefox (to 112.0) while a FireFox session with (I think) 6 windows was running, quit the FireFox session, started it again. Open Previous Windows and Tabs in the General Settings section is already checked.

Actual results:

Now only one window is open (the last one that was focused). History menu remembers two more of the windows and am able to open those as well. The other three(?) are gone. I've seen this happen with previous versions of FireFox as well but only on my Linux computer. I use an OS X computer as well and have never seen this happen.

Expected results:

when I restarted FireFox, all of the windows should have reopened.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Gtk' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[jdien07]

one of the forgotten windows had over 60 tabs and another had over 40 tabs, so the problem may be related to their numbers. I don't remember what exactly was on the other window(s). Perhaps Firefox is quitting out before it finishes with saving the windows?

Comment 3

[jdien07]

Did more testing. Now FireFox 112.0.1. It looks like it has nothing to do with restarting. I simply open five windows (say), Quit, restart by clicking on the FireFox icon, and only three windows open up. The two that are lost are not necessarily the newest or most tabs. I don't see a pattern. So it simply doesn't remember more than three windows, consistently.

Joe

Comment 4

[Monica Chiorean]

Could not reproduce it on Ubuntu 20.04 using Firefox builds 112.0.1 and 113.0. If I have the option 'Open previous windows and tabs' checked all windows/tab are reopened after restart.
Does this also happen with a new and empty profile? See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#w_6-create-a-new-firefox-profile. Thank you.

Comment 5

[Rares Doghi, Desktop QA]

I tried to reproduce this issue on a different Ubuntu 20.04 but I cant seem to reproduce it on our side. Unfortunately we don't have a pop!_os distribution to try this on but maybe one of our devs can try and reproduce it on their end. I will add the qa-not-actionable for now.

Comment 6

[jdien07]

Hi, I'm sorry for delay, I got quite busy. I followed your suggestion to make an empty profile using profile manager and it did not make a difference. I did further testing and found that the window loss happens only when I right-click on the Dock icon to quit FireFox. If I quit using the File menu or the Troubleshoot Mode option, then the windows are fine. Could you try seeing if you can replicate the problem by right-clicking and quitting using the Dock icon? Right now I'm on a 22.04 Pop!_OS laptop and 115.0 FireFox. Let me know if there is any further testing you would like me to do.

Joe

Comment 7

[jdien07]

Further information is that I am running Cosmic Dock, which is Pop!_OS's default install for the Dock. No other extensions that should affect the Dock, as far as I know.

Comment 8

[jdien07]

The System76 folks (who develop Pop!_OS) have replicated my bug. They suggested posting a bug at the dash-to-dock github website (Cosmic Dock is a branch of it), which I have done:

https://github.com/micheleg/dash-to-dock/issues/2059

Comment 9

[jdien07]

So to summarize:

Using Cosmic Dock (branch of dash-to-dock) on Pop!_OS 22.04 (Ubuntu distro) and FireFox 115.0:

1. In FireFox, goto Settings>General and click on the "Open previous windows and tabs" checkbox

2. Open four windows (one tab each is fine).

3. Quit by right-clicking on the Dock icon.

4. Restart by clicking on the Dock icon.

At this point you should have four windows. The bug is that FireFox is only remembering up to three windows and no more.

This behavior has been replicated on my desktop, my laptop, and a computer at System76. Using a fresh profile makes no difference. Quitting by using the FireFox File menu does not produce this behavior. Current hypothesis is some kind of interaction between Cosmic Dock (and dash-to-dock?) and FireFox; not sure which side has the bug.

Comment 10

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

There is a pref browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo which has a default value of 3 - which seems an unlikely coincidence. But the STR you've given here should always restore all your windows. Need-infoing myself to attempt to reproduce.

Comment 11

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

I can reproduce this on Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS. If you open > 3 windows, and quit using the dock icon (right-click, click "Quit 4 windows"), the saved session when you next start only contains 3 windows. If you change browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo to 4 and then only 4 windows are available to restore. (Note that unless you have automatic session restore enabled, you'll find this option under the History menu -> "Restore previous session".)
I'm guessing the dock action is closing those windows one at a time rather than invoking application quit, and thus running into the max_windows_undo limit. I'm not sure if there's a way for us to detect or handle this case, or if the solution needs to be a change in the host OS.

A workaround in the meantime is to adjust the value of browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo in about:config.

Comment 12

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

Attachment: Screenshot-2023-08-08-ubuntu-dock-quit-n-windows.png

Here's the menu on Ubuntu from right-clicking the dock for nightly, when you have 4 browser windows open.

Comment 13

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Moving this back to Widget:Gtk in case this can somehow be handled better on that side.