516812 - Session not restored when Firefox is launched from an external program

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Greg]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

When Firefox has been exited and the Tabs have been saved, if Firefox is subsequently relaunched via a link in, say, an Outlook e-mail (possibly after a reboot), Firefox will open to the URL of the page clicked but all saved tabs will be lost.

Nor do they appear, I believe, in the Recently Closed Tabs list.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open several tabs in Firefox
2.Attempt Exit Firefox without closing the tabs.  Click "Save and Quit".
3.Reboot (not sure if this is required)
4.Click on a link in an e-mail (I use Outlook 2003 as an e-mail client) to launch Firefox
Actual Results:  
Firefox launches to the e-mail link's URL, but all supposedly "saved" tabs are gone.

Expected Results:  
Firefox should have behaved just as if it had been launched separately and _then_ an e-mail link selected.  That is:  "Saved" tabs should have been restored and the e-mail link URL should have opened in a separate tab.

I don't know if this is a new problem or whether it has been around for a long time, only that I'm noticing it more and more frequently.  It may be just that I'm getting more links in my e-mail these days.  

I love the Save Tab feature, but it's frustrating because I save the tabs because I'm not done with that page.  So when this happens, I have to look through my history and try to recall and recreate the tabs I had before I Saved them.

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Does it also happen when you open an url shortcut from the desktop? In which folder Firefox is installed on your box?

I don't see this behavior. So can you please deactivate all installed extensions and try again? Eventually one of those could cause this behavior.

Comment 2

[Greg]

I have not figured out what is required to make this consistently reproducible.

I was able to reproduce it once today - but, like you, my other attempts did not reproduce the problem.

One thing I don't know whether has any relation to the problem:  In mornings and evenings I connect to the internet through AT&T DSL via my home D-Link wireless router, but during the day my laptop connects to the University of Georgia campus wireless network.  I will do some more experimentation tomorrow to see if maybe it has something to do with being unable to restore tabs which had been saved while I was on a different network.

Comment 3

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Greg, please answer my questions and do the proposed steps from comment 1. Thanks.

Comment 4

[Greg]

Henrik, I do not know the answers to your questions without further testing.  As I said, as yet I cannot consistently reproduce the problem using strictly _my_own_ steps, let alone under the conditions you suggest:

a) I do not know if it happens when I open a URL from the desktop - because that is not a normal way I launch Firefox.  I suspect it will, but I do not know.  Therefore, I have created a URL on my desktop to test this and I will let you know as soon as I can make it occur with that method.

b) By "extensions," I asssume you mean "add-ons."  I only have 6 "add-ons" (Yahoo toolbar, Norton toolbar, Norton IPS, Microsoft Framework Assistant, Move Media Player, Ancestry.com Image Viewer), but I have disabled them as you suggested.  That is what I will be testing today.  I will let you know what I discover.

Comment 5

[Greg]

After many attempts, I was able to make it occur again.  As all add-ons were disabled, I can confirm the add-ons are not responsible.  As I was connected to my home wireless network and have not rebooted, I can confirm that it is unrelated to rebooting or to different networks.  

As this time I reproduced it by clicking an e-mail link, I am still trying to confirm it occurs with a desktop link.

I still do not know what factors are required to make the issue consistently reproducible.  On this occasion, the laptop had been idle for a while before I clicked the link and Firefox was noticeably slow to launch; also, while it was launching, I also went and launched an instance of Internet Explorer in parallel.

Comment 6

[Greg]

And I see I overlooked another of your questions.  The folder in which Firefox is installed on my system is:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 4\firefox.exe"

Comment 7

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

If an instance of IE is opened in parallel too, something is wrong with your registry keys. That shouldn't happen. I would propose to re-set Firefox as your default browser.

Further please try to reproduce it with an URL located on the desktop.

Comment 8

[Greg]

No no, you misunderstand.  Firefox _is_ my default browser.  But occasionally I use both:  I manually launched IE in parallel while Firefox was loading.

Comment 9

[Greg]

... And I have not been able to reproduce it with a URL on the desktop.

Comment 10

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

No idea if this is eventually a DDE problem. Greg, do you have a chance to test the behavior with another application as Outlook? A non-Microsoft product would be fine. Like any chat client or Thunderbird as email client.

Comment 11

[Greg]

I will look into trying that.  Currently, Outlook is the only e-mail client installed.  

For what it's worth, every time I can recall reproducing the issue there has been some time pass since the previous time I launched Firefox (~20 min idle, hibernate, or reboot) and the exact URL link clicked has not been one I've ever visited before (because usually it appears in a new e-mail message which I select without thinking, before remembering, 'Oh no, I had tabs saved!'... and then they're gone).

(And Firefox usually takes a couple seconds longer launching, as though it's not in the frequently-used program cache any more.)

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Are you sure the session store/tabs are lost?
What is the size of your sessionstore.js?
 ref: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

Comment 13

[Greg]

All I know is that when I Exit Firefox with multiple tabs open and it asks me, "Do you want Firefox to save your tabs for the next time that it starts?" and I click "Save and Quit," when Firefox is subsequently launched by clicking an e-mail link, it intermittently launches with only a _single_ tab (i.e., corresponding to the URL of the link clicked):  I.e., the saved tabs have been "forgotten."  At first I thought perhaps I was absently mistaking the "Close Tabs" popup with the "Save and Quit" popup, but I have satisfied myself that I have indeed been saving & quitting.

I did not even know of the existence of a sessionstore.js file, but I have looked it up and can report to you that the only file I've located thus far with a name like that is "nsSessionStore.js" and it is 104 KB.

Comment 14

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

(In reply to comment #13)
> I did not even know of the existence of a sessionstore.js file, but I have
> looked it up and can report to you that the only file I've located thus far
> with a name like that is "nsSessionStore.js" and it is 104 KB.

Please look in your profile folder for "sessionstore.js". http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Profiles#How_to_find_your_profile as well as the link in comment #12 can help you locate the right folder. It should only take a minute and will help us diagnose the problem.

Comment 15

[Greg]

Oh, I see.  I found it:  sessionstore.js is currently 77 KB

Comment 16

[Greg]

Okay, it just occurred again!  I looked in the profile directory and:

sessionstore.bak = 99KB
sessionstore.js  = 2KB

Comment 17

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

The presence of sessionstore.bak implies that you crashed sometime recently. The difference in size implies that a new session was indeed started. Is there a significant difference in last modified time (eg, was sessionstore.bak modified 5 days ago--meaning you didn't crash recently--or was it today).

I can't reproduce this. Do you by chance have any extensions that might be contributing to the problem? (eg TabMixPlus)

Comment 18

[Greg]

That is interesting.  If any crashing is happening, it's doing so silently:  I am not getting a notification that any error or crash is going on.  

I've been watching those files the last couple of days and, while both sessionstore.bak and sessionstore.js are erased when I click "Close Tabs," it appears that _every_time_ I "Save and Quit" a new sessionstore.bak is created (but the size is usually identical to sessionstore.js). 

In fact, it just happened again:
sessionstore.bak 10/1/2009 6:31pm 86KB
sessionstore.js  10/1/2009 7:06pm 1KB

It could be I don't know what you mean by "extensions".  I like Firefox as it is, so I run it fairly clean.  If by "extensions" you mean what appear to be called "Add-ons" in my Tools menu, as I mentioned above, all I have installed are the following 6 things:  Yahoo Toolbar, Norton Toolbar, Norton IPS, Microsoft Framework Assistant, Move Media Player, and Ancestry.com Image Viewer.  However, as I've also mentioned, I'm 90% certain that this issue has occurred even after disabling those add-ons.

Comment 19

[Greg]

After posting this, I did both a "Save and Quit" and "Close Tabs" to test and feel I should add a minor correction:

Minor correction - it appears sessionstore.bak is updated/created every time Firefox is _opened_ (versus closed) after a "Save and Quit".

But even so, I have never "lost" tabs from launching Firefox directly (which I typically do from the QuickLaunch menu); only when clicking on a link.

Comment 20

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Yes, the .bak is always created to make sure we have a copy if your session gets lost. That way you can manually rename it from .bak to .js.

Greg, as you have said you weren't able to reproduce it by opening a link located on the desktop. Can you please test other applications except Outlook if those show the similar problem? You can take a messenger or check the about this program dialog in the help menu of most applications. There you should also find a link most of the times.

Comment 21

[Greg]

Okay, I will continue to try to reproduce the problem with non-email links.

But its funny you should say that about sessionstore.bak... last night I thought - Aha, this may be a way to restore my tabs, just by renaming the  sessionstore.bak.  You may find this interesting:

If I rename the .bak file to .js after a _successful_ "Save and Quit" - it does restore all the tabs (as expected).

But if I rename the .bak file to .js after my tabs have been lost - it again copies the .js file to .bak and loses all my tabs - even if I launch Firefox directly.  Thus, there is still no way to restore those tabs.

Sounds like sessionstore.js is getting corrupted?

Comment 22

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

It looks like. You could remove both files and start from scratch. Just open a couple of tabs with non-private data and close Firefox with saving the tabs. Backup the .js file before clicking a link in your email program. Now compare the .bak and the backuped .js. You can also attach both files on this bug if they show anomalies. Thanks.

Comment 23

[Greg]

I made a copy of sessionstore.js right before Saving & Exiting (I'll call it "BEFORE").
I made another copy after Saving & Exiting (I'll call it "AFTER").
When Firefox launched and the error occurred, I compared these files to sessionstore.bak.

sessionstore.bak is identical to "AFTER".
sessionstore.bak (and "AFTER") are different from "BEFORE."

I'll attach the Before & After files and you can study what the differences are (as they mean nothing to me).

Comment 24

[Greg]

Attachment: "BEFORE" (copy of sessionstore.js before Saving & Exiting)

Comment 25

[Greg]

Attachment: sessionstore.bak after the issue occurred

Comment 26

[Greg]

Attachment: "AFTER" (copy of sessionstore.js after Saving & Exiting)

Comment 27

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not bugmail, email directly)]

(In reply to comment #23)
> sessionstore.bak is identical to "AFTER".

This is expected. The .bak is created at startup by copying sessionstore.js (I was wrong in comment #17)

> sessionstore.bak (and "AFTER") are different from "BEFORE."

This is expected. State & timestamp should be different.

> I'll attach the Before & After files and you can study what the differences are
> (as they mean nothing to me).

The only differences I'm seeing is that AFTER has updated the timestamp and set the state to stopped (expected), selectedWindow has changed, and a window has an updated title. Nothing that would indicate a problem.

Comment 28

[Greg]

And yet even though WinDiff tells me that "AFTER" and sessionstore.bak are identical, if I rename "sessionstore.bak" to "sessionstore.js" - the tabs will not be restored.  But with "AFTER" it works.

Comment 29

[Greg]

And yet if I rename "sessionstore.bak" to "sessionstore.js" - the tabs will
not be restored.

Comment 30

[Greg]

Argh, there's no way to delete comments?  Ignore comment #28 - it is incorrect.  Comment #29 is meant to replace it.

Comment 31

[Greg]

One more addendum:
Yes, I have confirmed it does also happen when opening an url shortcut from the desktop.  I just reproduced it.

As I alluded to above, a key to consistently (or at least frequently) reproducing the problem is that the URL must be one that has _never_ been visited before.  This is why it has been difficult to test:  I must wait until I receive a link in an e-mail I don't recognize as having visited.

Therefore, reproducing with a URL shortcut is even more difficult:  
I copy that e-mail URL and paste it into Internet Explorer (to avoid launching Firefox).  Then I drag the icon from IE to the desktop and then double-click it to launch Firefox (my default browser).  This is how I was able to reproduce the issue with a desktop shortcut.  Note that it is only a one-shot deal - now that the URL has been visited, it is unlikely to cause the issue if used again.

Comment 32

[u279076]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100412 Minefield/3.7a5pre

I cannot reproduce this on the latest nightly.  Resolving WORKSFORME.  Greg, if you can reproduce this on the latest nightly, please reopen with information about how you reproduced it.  Thanks.