847169 - Firefox 20 (and later) shows about:sessionrestore at every launch

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 845681

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[FX]

Since I applied the latest Beta update, I have the following issue: at each launch of the application, Firefox shows me the "about:sessionrestore" (aka "Well that's embarrassing! Firefox can't restore your tabs"), even if I didn't have tabs open when I last quit.

Always reproducible:

 1. I open Firefox, do some stuff, then close all tabs and windows.
 2. Then, I quit Firefox.
 3. I reopen the browser, and it says "Hum, c'est embarrassant. Firefox rencontre des difficultés pour restaurer vos fenêtres et onglets. Ceci est habituellement provoqué par une page web ouverte récemment." followed by a list including one window and one tab, always the same (even though I haven't browsed that page in a few days).


I use a Mac Intel 64-bit build (source: http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/f45f4b3cba11) on OS X 10.8.2.

Comment 1

[FX]

This may be a duplicate of #845681

Comment 2

[Joshua Nixon]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:20.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0 ID:20130227063501 CSet: f45f4b3cba11

OSX 10.8.2; same behavior here. Session Restore showing up nearly ever time, even if program exits cleanly. If I open the browser to default home page, then DO NOTHING except quit, I still get the Session Restore dialog on restart.

Starting up with all extensions/plugins disabled doesn't fix the issue.

Deleting sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak from profile temporarily allows clean restart, but issue crops up again after a short time.

Comment 3

[FX]

Confirmed also with a new clean profile:

 1. I created the profile, switched its preferences to "reopen last used tabs/windows on launch".
 2. Loaded content into a new tab, then quit Firefox.
 3. Relaunch, my tab was there. Close tab, then quit Firefox.
 4. Relaunch, and the tab was open! (should not have)
 5. Close the tab again, then quit Firefox again.
 6. Relaunch, and get the "session restore" dialog.

100% reproducible

Comment 4

[FX]

Still present in the latest build: http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/a853b233420d

Comment 5

[FX]

Still present in the latest build: http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/163304f85fc1 (beta 4, if I'm not mistaken).

Comment 6

[Joshua Nixon]

Don't know if it is helpful at all, but I nearly always explicitly close all tabs/windows before exiting the program to ensure that new sessions start with my home page. SessionRestore is pulling up the last location from my History on restart. This means the error does not depend on having a window open on exit; even closing all windows and then quitting (via cmd-Q or File menu) triggers the session restore error.

Comment 7

[FX]

Problem still exists in latest beta, no workaround is known… it's really bad!

Comment 8

[FX]

This still happens with the final releaser 20.0 version.

Comment 9

[Ray Z.]

(In reply to FX from comment #7)
> Problem still exists in latest beta, no workaround is known… it's really bad!

Yeah, it's definitely a bug. I did this, it works.

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-previous-session#w_privacy-issues

Comment 10

[FX]

(In reply to Ray M. from comment #9)
> http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-previous-session#w_privacy-issues

I tried to set browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false as a workaround, but it is not sufficient. With it, Firefox will reopen, on startup, tabs that had been closed before the last quit. I suspect something is not syncing the list of open tabs (sessionstore.js) correctly somewhere.

This bug is observed on released FF20 and FF21 Beta. No one from the FF team seems to care, I suppose "rapid release" doesn't mean "rapid bugfix" :(

Comment 11

[Ray Z.]

(In reply to FX from comment #10)
> (In reply to Ray M. from comment #9)
> > http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-previous-session#w_privacy-issues
> 
> I tried to set browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false as a
> workaround, but it is not sufficient. With it, Firefox will reopen, on
> startup, tabs that had been closed before the last quit. I suspect something
> is not syncing the list of open tabs (sessionstore.js) correctly somewhere.
> 
> This bug is observed on released FF20 and FF21 Beta. No one from the FF team
> seems to care, I suppose "rapid release" doesn't mean "rapid bugfix" :(

It works fine here on Fx20, OS X 10.7.5 Well, I doubt that if you set Preferences > General > Startup "When Firefox starts" to "Show my windows and tabs from last time". Try change it to blank or homepage.

And of course "browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false" is just a temp solution. I hope Mozilla developers would pay attention on the bug and fix it too.

Fx improved a lot with no doubt since the rapid release, especially on startup time and memory usage. On the other hand, small issues appears more often than ever too. I guess that will stop happening once they finished implanting most of the new&cool features, and focusing on usability and stability.