624114 - Session Restore misses entire windows and/or uses old sets of windows

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[joanne613]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13 GTB7.1 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0C)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13 GTB7.1 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0C)

I had been using Ffx 3.6.6 until a few hours ago, when I upgraded to Ffx 3.6.13. I usually have 3 to 5 windows open with anywhere from 5 to 40 tabs in each window; I realize this is quite a load, but it never caused this issue until recently.  When I want to close FFx, I go to File/Exit so that Session Restore will re-open my same tabs, along with keeping their history. About 2-3 weeks ago, I noticed that Session Restore did not restore my tabs as they were at closing, but rather reverted to the previous Restore data (call it Set A, multiple windows). Sessionstore.js was showing an updated "modified" date/time, so it appeared to be updating, but it was not.  Then last week, I had a hard time shutting down and upon restarting my pc, I got three error codes which I let open informational tabs in FFx (set B, single window).  After that point, every restore seem to "nest" the previous restore under it -- e.g. the window that opened with that informational tabs also had an "Oops we can't load" tab with the previous restore data I'd been getting for over a week.  Then when I had one more FFx crash, the Session Restore opened a window with an "Oops" tab and only some of the informational tabs (set C, single window) - that "oops" tab showed me the tabs of Set B, including that window's Oops tab; I was able to restore B from inside C, and then I could restore A from inside B...so it took 3 restores to get to my three-week old tabs!  

Earlier today, I upgraded from 3.6.6 to 3.6.13, and I was able to get those same tabs from multiple restores on the first load of 3.6.13. In trying to see if sessionstore.js had uncorrupted, I closed FFx once more.  This time, only the "Firefox Updated" tab came up on the Oops page -- argh!  Fortunately I did a tab folder about a week ago for the windows, so I opened those tab sets into separate 4 windows, just having to forgo history and anything I'd opened/surfed to in the past week.  To test again, I waited about 10 minutes after every tab had loaded, then closed out Ffx.  When I launched FFx this time, I got an Oops page that only showed 2 of the 4 windows, and listed a 3rd window with just one tab of my Home page (as it loaded when I opened that window before going to Favorites and asking it to load a folder).  Are all of these problems from the same cause???

I have also noticed that when I close FFx, although the windows themselves close quickly, it often takes 30+ seconds for firefox.exe to disappear from Task Manager.  Is this related to having so many tabs open?  And would this delayed close of .exe be causing the issue of Set A not updating for so many days?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Launch several windows of Ffx, each with more than 5 tabs
2. Close Ffx (File/Exit)
3. Re-launch Ffx
Actual Results:  
The "Oops" page does not show the most recent tab sets, but rather a much older set of tabs that has since been altered.

Expected Results:  
The "Oops" tab wold show the most recent tabs open before Ffx was properly closed...or all the tabs would just open.

I'm calling Severity=Medium instead of Normal because Session Restore is a major feature of Ffx.

Comment 1

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

Do you have any extensions that might be interacting with the built-in session restore? There weren't any substantial (or any?) changes to session restore between the versions you mention.

You do have a lot of tabs, but that should be OK. Unless you have about:sessionrestore history somewhere and your sessionstore.js is very large causing us to silently fail or his memory issues. But you said your last-modified was very recent...

(In reply to comment #0)
> I have also noticed that when I close FFx, although the windows themselves
> close quickly, it often takes 30+ seconds for firefox.exe to disappear from
> Task Manager.  Is this related to having so many tabs open?  And would this
> delayed close of .exe be causing the issue of Set A not updating for so many
> days?

I would suspect an add-on misbehaving to cause the slow shutdown, but it's possible it's related to this. I would suggest running without any addons for a few days to see if things improve.

Also, it might be worth running the Firefox 4 betas to see if the issue is reproducible there.

Comment 2

[u279076]

Joanne, any luck reproducing this with add-ons disabled in a Firefox 4 beta?

Comment 3

[joanne613]

@Paul - how would I be able to tell if a particular add-on was interacting with session restore?  (I know enough to be dangerous when doing my own trouble-shooting, but I don't know enough to know this ;)

Ffx is still having trouble closing completely -- I see all browser windows close quickly, but it stays in Task Mgr, using even more % of resources for anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes, at which point I did End Task so I could safely shut down.

As far as disabling Add-ons, are there any in my list that can be considered safe without a doubt, or do I need to turn all of them off, and then spend hours turning them back on one at a time?  (it takes a while to load all my tabs and I don't really want to lose tab history *again*).  If it matters, I did try the Bar Tab add-on to reduce load times, but BT seems to override many of my favorite aspects of other add-ons (like Tab Utilities), so I removed it after a day or two...is there another add-on that will help with tab load like BT that doesn't override other add-ons' settings?

@Paul and Anthony - I haven't been brave enough to try the Beta; we've been iced in to the house (cabin fever!), so I didn't want to risk having no FFx at all without doing a system restore rollback.  Have only willing closed FFx once this week, and when restored it still didn't show that same 5th window.  But it did know that window #1 had some tabs changed, although it seems to have saved its info about 10 minutes after the previous session was restored, and didn't save any other tab changes/opens/closes after that point, even though that session had been open for hours.  Other session restores were after a crash (I think one was due to a site being too Flash-heavy) and used that same set of tabs.

Comment 4

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

(In reply to comment #3)
> @Paul - how would I be able to tell if a particular add-on was interacting with
> session restore?  (I know enough to be dangerous when doing my own
> trouble-shooting, but I don't know enough to know this ;)

Let's do this then. Can you list all of your add-ons you have installed? We can help figure out if any might be interfering or possibly to blame.

> Ffx is still having trouble closing completely -- I see all browser windows
> close quickly, but it stays in Task Mgr, using even more % of resources for
> anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes, at which point I did End Task so I
> could safely shut down.

This very well could be related to an add-on or simply the number of add-ons you have installed. Again, seeing that list could help.

> As far as disabling Add-ons, are there any in my list that can be considered
> safe without a doubt, or do I need to turn all of them off, and then spend
> hours turning them back on one at a time?  (it takes a while to load all my
> tabs and I don't really want to lose tab history *again*).

You can try using Firefox in Safe Mode (http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe Mode) which will disable all of your extensions at once and when you're done they will be reenabled.

> If it matters, I
> did try the Bar Tab add-on to reduce load times, but BT seems to override many
> of my favorite aspects of other add-ons (like Tab Utilities), so I removed it
> after a day or two...is there another add-on that will help with tab load like
> BT that doesn't override other add-ons' settings?

There are so many add-ons that listing ones that have potential to cause issues might be longer than the list you have. (Looks like the list is really going to help :D)

Comment 5

[cj rice]

I have had problems with the "Restore Previous Session" feature in Firefox for at least 6 months, maybe a year. I am currently running Firefox 11.0 on Mac OS 10.5.8, with these add-ons: Flagfox, MeasureIt, Web Developer, ColorZilla, and Firebug. I have AdBlock Plus currently disabled. 

The problems began after an update of Firefox, not after installing an add-on (which doesn't necessarily mean an add-on isn't causing the problem). 

The restore problems have varied over time, sometimes restoring more than just the previous session (including pages from two sessions previous), and sometimes only restoring some of the previous session, and sometimes restoring nothing. Unfortunately, I can't associate one of these behaviors with a particular version of Firefox, although there may be some correlation.

This would be a very useful feature, if it still worked the way it used to. 

CJ

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

joanne, please reply to comment 4. thanks

Comment 7

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard