Hi jb__, sorry to hear about the time travel. By default, Firefox updates the session history file every 15 seconds (if anything has changed). However, it's possible that either:

• Firefox stopped updating the file due to some problem, or
• External cleaning software removed the latest file but left an older one which Firefox used instead

On the first point, a bug was discovered in Firefox 56 (also present in Firefox 57) where a background process involved in saving session history would sometimes stop working. There is a fix in Firefox 58 to restart the process if that situation is detected. (I might have oversimplified that.) Hopefully this will help going forward.

Ok, so i have to wait for ff 58. thanks for your clear answer.

JB

ps : maybe you could add a save all tabs urls when FF exits and when it starts compare to the restoresession.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-previous-session#w_configuring-session-restore

As you can see in above article link you can have Firefox resume as if you never closed it.

It sounds like you were purposely crashing Firefox to use the crash restore as Firefox should ideally be fully closed before shutting diwn.

Firefox 58.0 has been the current Release since January 23 as you can do a update or download from www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/

my FF just updated to 58 yesterday, so i'll test how it behaves.

The link you propose does not unfortunately answer my problem, when i launch FF i don"t want always a resume of the previous session. I just want that if i ask then it restores the exact session.

I didn't know that exiting FF was "purposely crashing Firefox" ;) but i also figured that when you exit and close the win10 session sometimes the closing of the session halts because FF has not properly ended or is still doing "things" in the background.

But that is probably not the cause because the problem with difference between the restoresession and the saved bookmarks occurs regardless of the supposed crash of FF. I mean when it has crashed, at the reload you start with a page dedicated to the crash but when it has not crashed you start with a blank page : at this point restoring the session should restore the session, not silently some crash restore. No?

Btw, when you show the crash restore page, it would be wonderfuly awesome if we could have the option to bookmark all the tabs in that page without having to reload them.

This problem is still not solved (on my computer at least) the restore session still does NOT restore all tabs, yesterday 7 tabs were missing.

I found another bug : "bookmark all tabs" does NOT bookmark all tabs, some are missing...

i have the latest firfox 32bits windows 10.

jb__ said

This problem is still not solved (on my computer at least) the restore session still does NOT restore all tabs, yesterday 7 tabs were missing.

Next time, before you exit Firefox, could you take a look at whether the live session file in your profile folder -- which Firefox normally will update as often as every 15 seconds -- has been kept up-to-date. This is just for information, or potentially to use a workaround like using an extension to save your session as a backup.

You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Open Folder" (or "Show in Finder") button.

In your profile folder, double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. You should find that recovery.jsonlz4 has been updated as of the last time you did anything affecting tabs (open, close, change page). Is Firefox far behind in updating the file?

I found another bug : "bookmark all tabs" does NOT bookmark all tabs, some are missing...

Do you notice any pattern to the missing tabs? For example, were all the missing tabs activated during the current session, or were some restored and not touched during the current session?

Thanks for the help,

the recovery.jsonlz4 keeps in sync, the restore session lose 7 tabs from 253 (yesterday) to 246 (today), the bookmark all tabs lose 10 tabs from the 246 so 236 only saved.

for the bookmark all tabs, there is no patterns in the lost tabs. not activated but bookmarked, just created and not bookmarked. the save all bookmarks seems consistent (a few subsequent calls, save the sames bookmarks)

the extension MySessions has not these problems (does not lose one tab between sessions and the bookmarks are ok) but is not a good replacement because you cannot use the restore session without loading all the tabs which is a real mess when you have lots of tabs) it seems all these problems are way more frequent since the Quantum version of Firefox.

Thanks for checking that. It sounds as though the problem might not be with the newest updates. I wonder whether there is a point at which they "age out" or whether old tabs are always restored forever.

Could you set aside the "before" and "after" recovery.jsonlz4 files. It could be useful to compare the details of the missing tabs to see if there is any reason Firefox might not restore them. (As for how to compare, I think someone might need to write a script for that.)

As a footnote, I never have 200+ tabs in a window and I don't know what implications that might have.

(I rarely have more than 20 tabs in a single window. When I have a set of tabs for a distinct project that isn't going to be finished soon, I usually move them to a separate window so I can minimize that and keep them out of my way.)

that"s what i"m investigating, maybe you can help to explain this :

recovery.jsonlz4 exists only when firefox is running, as soon as i close firefox the file disappears. recovery.baklz4 behaves the same. i have now only a previous.jsonlz4 instead.

the trick is they have quite not the same size, so where is the session really stored between sessions?

It also does not explain the erratic behavior of "bookmark all tabs"

For the big sessions with lots of tabs it"s because i source assets during the week hence lots of pages to check and the problem with the failing bookmarks/session is that my memory works better than firefox so i remember that i have that tab with that image but i can't find it since firefox secretly erased it ;)

methink i"d to write a tool to solve this.

Are you closing Firefox or are you shutting down the computer and force the OS to close (kill) Firefox and hope that sessionstore will reopen tabs?

You should always close Firefox and wait long enough to give Firefox the time to close properly if you care about personal data stored in the profile folder. If Firefox isn't closing properly then it isn't guaranteed that all your data is saved and files might (or will) be corrupted because Firefox keeps data in memory during a session.

cor-el said

Are you closing Firefox or are you shutting down the computer and force the OS to close (kill) Firefox and hope that sessionstore will reopen tabs? You should always close Firefox and wait long enough to give Firefox the time to close properly if you care about personal data stored in the profile folder. If Firefox isn't closing properly then it isn't guaranteed that all your data is saved and files might (or will) be corrupted because Firefox keeps data in memory during a session.

i click the little cross in the right upper corner if that"s what you imply with "closing firefox properly" then i do other things and when i shutdown the computer there is no firefox process still running (i always check since i discovered this weird behavior) it has no impact (it seems) and firefox has no problem restoring the session, it"s just that the session is missing tabs (as explained previously) and bookmark all tabs doesn't bookmark all tabs.

i remember though that before Quantum, sometimes i had to use the brutal os kill firefox method because firefox had problems when awakening from sleep when lots of tabs were open. But since Quantum this problem has gone (or it seems)

Does that help you?

Bookmark All Tabs doesn't bookmark duplicate tabs that have the same URL, so if you have tabs that have the same URL but have different content then bookmark all tabs won't work properly.

Note that is if still preferred to use the close item in the File menu or in the "3-bar" Firefox menu button drop-down list and not the close X. There is a slight difference about the way the close X works and if you experience issues then make it a habit and use the Exit/Quit menu item.

jb__ said

recovery.jsonlz4 exists only when firefox is running, as soon as i close firefox the file disappears. recovery.baklz4 behaves the same. i have now only a previous.jsonlz4 instead.

the trick is they have quite not the same size, so where is the session really stored between sessions?

When you exit Firefox and shutdown occurs normally, the contents of recovery.jsonlz4 are saved in the main level of the profile folder under the name sessionstore.jsonlz4; previous.jsonlz4 is not updated until a new session starts.

cor-el said

Bookmark All Tabs doesn't bookmark duplicate tabs that have the same URL, so if you have tabs that have the same URL but have different content then bookmark all tabs won't work properly.

it won't work properly as it will screw bookmarks or just not bookmarking the duplicates? but the problem remains, the un-bookmarked were not duplicates.

Note that is if still preferred to use the close item in the File menu or in the "3-bar" Firefox menu button drop-down list and not the close X. There is a slight difference about the way the close X works and if you experience issues then make it a habit and use the Exit/Quit menu item.

That"s a first! the close X pops a confirmation popup then close as probably all the apps in windows since ... ever. If it behaves differently (with firefox) than the Quit menu then maybe they should make a bigger popup with a flashing warning that says that it may breaks the user experience every other apps provide since always. I don't know anyone that use something else than the close X for any kind of app.

Thanks for the information.

jscher2000 said

jb__ said

recovery.jsonlz4 exists only when firefox is running, as soon as i close firefox the file disappears. recovery.baklz4 behaves the same. i have now only a previous.jsonlz4 instead.

the trick is they have quite not the same size, so where is the session really stored between sessions?

When you exit Firefox and shutdown occurs normally, the contents of recovery.jsonlz4 are saved in the main level of the profile folder under the name sessionstore.jsonlz4; previous.jsonlz4 is not updated until a new session starts.

oh thank you, that will help tracking. Is there a doc that explains the timing of events in firefox or a birdeye view of the interactions between firefox and windows?

jb__ said

Is there a doc that explains the timing of events in firefox or a birdeye view of the interactions between firefox and windows?

There probably are dozens of different documents / wiki pages / blog posts directed toward different features/functions, but I only happen across them from time to time.

Ok, i tried the "official way of quitting firefox" as recommended by @co'rel, it quit immediately without asking for confirmation whereas the windows way (close X button) asked for with a popup.

But the result is the same : a few lost tabs.

I gathered a few jsonlz4 and a tool to deflate them, will run a few tests.