430457 - Firefox should be able to detect and repair corrupt sessions which interfere with session restore.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 398817

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Josh Karli]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032620 Firefox/3.0b5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032620 Firefox/3.0b5

An unrelated Vista x64 SP1 (build up to date as of 4/23/08) BSOD (caused by video driver malfunction) occurred while multiple tabs were open. Vista automatically recovered from this BSOD by rebooting. Ever since then the Beta 5 session restore feature will not work even though it is enabled. Have reinstalled with no results. Undo closed tabs will work, but when closed with multiple or just a single tab(s) open, and then Firefox is opened again, it will not restore my tabs. I suspect the file which stores session information is corrupt. I have not tried manually deleting this file as I don't know what it is, but I assume Firefox should have overwritten it during reinstall since my session was reset during upgrade of Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 Beta. The following addons are installed: Image Zoom 0.3.1, NoScript 1.5.8, Download Statusbar 0.9.6.1.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1. 
2.
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Comment 1

[Josh Karli]

4/25/08 UPDATE:
For a reason beyond my understanding, after a few days of regular (heavy) use of Firefox, I opened Firefox using my normal quick launch shortcut to find that Firefox 2 started instead of Firefox 3 Beta 5. This was immediately obvious since my tabs from my previous session were restored. Subsequent usage revealed that the restore session feature had recovered from what ever error was afflicting it before. Two open/close cycles of Firefox and two reboots later, the same shortcut decided to launch Firefox 3 Beta 5 instead, which brings us now to the present. Now Firefox 3 Beta 5 appears to be operating normally and without any issues with the session restore feature. Whether resumption of Firefox 2 and the subsequent "fixing" of my session restore feature was a programmed self-healing of F3b5, or perhaps it detected the fault and tried to get itself to reinstall on the next run but instead the shortcut caused Firefox 2 to run, or something else happened entirely is beyond me. I will update if anything occurs again.

Comment 2

[Simon Bünzli]

Firefox should actually discard a damaged sessionstore.js on startup. If that doesn't happen, it'd be quite helpful to get a copy of the corrupted sessionstore.js from your current profile (open in a text editor first to make sure there's no privacy sensitive data in there) and the error messages from Tools -> Error Console.

-> INCOMPLETE (please reopen should this issue happen again)

Comment 3

[Josh Karli]

UPDATE: 
Soon after my last update F3b5 again would not restore sessions, and Firefox 2 would open instead of F3b5 upon next use as noted in the previous update. This went back and forth for some time and I had not reported it since it was more of the same behavior. I completely uninstalled F3b5 and F2 before installation of the release version of Firefox 3 on the day of its release and the problem has not occurred since. Firefox 3 is great, by the way, awesome job guys!

Comment 4

[Josh Karli]

UPDATE: 
The problem is back: Firefox 3 (F3) will not restore my tabs from my previous session even though it is set to do so in the Options window.

The extensions I currently have installed are: AVG Safesearch 8.0, DOM Inspector 2.0.0, Download Statusbar 0.9.6.3, firefusk 1.6, Image Zoom 0.3.1, meebo 1.1, and Rotate Image 0.1.3.1. The problem persists when all extensions are disabled and F3 is restarted.

I checked, and browser.sessionstore.enable is set to true.

You mentioned F3 should discard a damaged sessionstore.js on startup. I have observed that the sessionstore.js file is being written to properly, as monitoring the file reveals it is being updated regularly with my tab information while F3 is running. Upon closing F3, this information is overwritten, see below. (all extensions are disabled)

Contents before close: (only this bugreport tab open)
({windows:[{tabs:[{entries:[{url:"https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430457", title:"Bug 430457 \u2013 Firefox should be able to detect and repair corrupt sessions which interfere with session restore.", ID:0, scroll:"0,1755"}], index:1}], selected:1, _closedTabs:[], _hosts:{}, width:1022, height:734, screenX:1705, screenY:138, sizemode:"normal"}], selectedWindow:1, session:{state:"running"}})

Contents after close:
({windows:[], selectedWindow:0, session:{state:"stopped"}})

Contents after reopen: (only a blank tab open)
({windows:[{tabs:[{entries:[{url:"about:blank", scroll:"0,0"}], index:1}], selected:1, _closedTabs:[], _hosts:{}, width:"1022", height:"734", screenX:"1788", screenY:"6", sizemode:"maximized"}], selectedWindow:1, session:{state:"running"}})


The Error Console reveals the following message:
"SessionStore: The session file is invalid: TypeError: this._initialState.windows[0] is undefined"

Please let me know if there is anything more I can do.

Comment 5

[Simon Bünzli]

Actually, this doesn't sound like a corrupt sessionstore.js at all but rather like bug 398817... you don't happen to clear your private data (mainly History) at shutdown, do you? That happens to clear out sessionstore.js in the exact way you describe it in comment #4 (thanks to the details provided).

Comment 6

[Josh Karli]

Thank you Simon. I reviewed bug 398817 and it seems you are correct. Perhaps a short note can be inserted in the dialogue window next to the Clear Browsing History option which notifies people that it also clears sessions which are otherwise set to be restored. I would imagine this would clear up some misreports such as this one.

Thanks again. Marking this bug report as a duplicate of bug 398817.