594630 - "Show my windows and tabs from last time" resets to "Show my home page"

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Allan Wind]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100819 Iceweasel/3.5.11 (like Firefox/3.5.11)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.11) Gecko/20100819 Iceweasel/3.5.11 (like Firefox/3.5.11)

I reviewed existing tickets along the lines of summary including <https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox+does+not+ask+to+save+tabs+and+windows+on+exit> and not seeing anything that matches what I see.

Today I closed firefox with 60+ tabs of things that I wanted to read by closing the browser window (by pressing the X).  When I started my computer at open and opened up firefox the browser opened up with a blank window meaning that I once again lost my todo reading list.

The preference "When Iceweasel starts" changed to "Show my home page" which is "about:".  Privacy | History is set to "Use custom settings for history" and none of the options including "Clear history when Iceweasel closes" is checked.

My session is usually restored, say, 90% of the time using the same process, and it is really annoying when losing my session.

There is no crash dialog (ops, cannot restore your session or whatever the window is).

Reproducible: Didn't try

Actual Results:  
"Preferences | Main | When Icewasel starts:" is reset to "Use my home page", and I lose all my tabs.

Expected Results:  
The above preference remains as set "Show my windows and tabs from last time" and my tabs are restored.

I have seen this once or twice before where I lose my session when I start firefox at home, but then when I start firefox at work the following day my session is restored.

Comment 1

[George K.]

Something similar happened to me when I upgraded from yesterday's Minefield build to today's:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b6pre) Gecko/20100910 Firefox/4.0b6pre

Minefield reverted from reloading my previously open tabs to "Show a blank page". Also, copying my old sessionstore.bak file back into the profile as sessionstore.js, but opening about:sessionrestore shows a blank list.

Comment 2

[George K.]

Changing my preference to "Show my windows and tabs from last time" and replacing sessionstore.js with my old copy now brings up the Minefield Start Page (my Home Page). about:sessionrestore shows 2 windows (correct) with no tabs (incorrect).

I think I may be experiencing a new issue (a regression).

Comment 3

[Santa]

I have also found the same thing. The option resets to start my home page instead of restore tabs from last time. I will do a restore session from the about:home page to get all the tabs from last time, and then manually close the others.

Comment 4

[Santa]

I have also found the same thing. The option resets to start my home page instead of restore tabs from last time. I will do a restore session from the about:home page to get all the tabs from last time, and then manually close the others.

Comment 5

[Santa]

Also, one thing I have noticed is that if I close the browser and open it again in a few minutes (which I did just now), it restores the tabs properly, but when I closed the browser yesterday and opened it today, the tabs are not restored and the start option also gets reset to home page instead of tabs from last session. I found this behavior multiple times in this week.

Comment 6

[Carlos G Mendioroz]

I was here looking to report the inverse: always used open a blank page and now FF tries to open last open tabs even though preference still says open blank page. 45.0.1 on windows 7 or 10.

Comment 7

[dkowal]

I often set the startup option to restore tabs from last time, and always get a restore of the home page instead. I get a similar failure on both 52.0 on windows 7 and 52.0.2 on Ubuntu. I believe this is because of setting the privacy/ history to clear history on exit.