343483 - Session is not restored after full update installed by the new "install the most recent build" feature

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Weston Carloss]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1a3) Gecko/20060703 BonEcho/2.0a3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1a3) Gecko/20060703 BonEcho/2.0a3

If the user has a nightly build that is more than a day old, the new updater will download the full update for the latest build to get them up to date.  When the browser applies the update and restarts, the previous session is not restored.  Only the home page is loaded.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Get an hourly/nightly build from a few days ago.  
2.  Make sure that session restore is turned on through the hidden prefs.
3.  Load a few tabs.
4.  Check for updates and update to the most recent build.

Actual Results:  
Upon restart the session is not restored.  Instead, the home page is loaded.

Expected Results:  
The previous session should be restored.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

It should also show the previous session without browser.sessionstore.resume_session to true. 
Just like clicking the restart button in the Add-ons manager, but it doesn't after a full download.

Comment 2

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

I see user_pref("browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once", true); in both cases while restarting.

Comment 3

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

I've confirmed that the resume_session_once functionality works in today's build, when manually set.

Anyone know the bug associated with the "install most recent build" feature? I dug around and couldn't find it.

Comment 4

[Adam Guthrie]

Is this a regression? Bug 311744 comment 13 seems to imply this worked at one point.

Just to clarify, "install the most recent build" is just referring to the automatic updates feature (accessible via Help > Check for Updates), I think.

Comment 5

[Weston Carloss]

@Ria
I had browser.sessionstore.resume_session set to true before the full update was applied.  In fact, the build started by restoring my last session.  I had this happen at home when going from a trunk hourly on Thursday to yesterday's nightly.  I also had it happen today at work going from a Friday build (I can't remember if it was an hourly or the nightly) to today's nightly build.  So it happened on both the branch and the trunk, with completely different profiles.

I wish I could give you better instructions to reproduce it, but I can't figure out a common thread between the two cases, unless they were both hourly -> nightly updates.

@Adam
What I meant by the "install the most recent build" is the client side change that allows users on the nightly channel to go from any build to the most recent one by installing the complete update.  The problem may occur any time that a full update is applied, but I've only seen it since the server side changes occurred.

Comment 6

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

So, we changed the data format from the .ini file to a JS object in bug 328162 and would have first appeared on 7/2, which means that old session data can't be reused when updating to that nightly from before that date.

Clearing and marking INVALID, please renominate if this can be reproduced going from a 7/2 build to something newer.

Comment 7

[Adam Guthrie]

-> INVALID per mconnor's comment. I verified this works when using a 2006-07-03 branch build and updating.