Migration to version 2021.06 loses all previously opened tabs

[nxdiamond]

Migration to version 2021.06 lost 40 windows with 2636 tabs open.

Session Manager sees its database but doesn't rescue the tabs.

Other people commented in this page: https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-2021.06-release/#commento-login-box-container

Please, how can I get my tabs back?

== addendum:

I reinstalled Waterfox Classic 2021.04.1 and Session Manager was able to reopen the crashed session. Session Manager couldn't make a new save of the current session though. When looking at the newly saved session, Session Manager said it had 1 window and 1 tab.

I think the following URLs work and I hope they don't stop working. We need them.

https://cdn.waterfox.net/releases/win64/installer/Waterfox Classic 2021.04.2 Setup.exe https://cdn.waterfox.net/releases/win64/installer/Waterfox Classic 2021.04.1 Setup.exe https://cdn.waterfox.net/releases/win64/installer/Waterfox Classic 2021.02 Setup.exe

[hawkeye116477]

I can't reproduce that on both Linux and W10.

PS:

lost 40 windows with 2636 tabs open.

Wow, maximum number which I opened was maybe about 100 tabs. I didn't think anyone would need that much... Maybe better would be adding to bookmarks next time, just like guys from PM forum suggested => https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=26811&p=214969&hilit=Session+Manager#p214906.

[decembre]

I had the same problem, solved with the use of the options usable in my Tabs Group manager.

[nxdiamond]

I use Waterfox in English, but the OS is Windows 10 Japanese. I wonder if 2021.06's new bug doesn't occur on an English language OS.

Most of my 2636 tabs are idle. Often I don't close a tab if I think I might want to look at it again someday. But even if I only planned to look at 20 of them today, I don't want to lose them.

[nxdiamond]

A different computer, which I don't use much, has 1 Waterfox window containing 32 tabs. The tabs survived the migration to 2021.06. There are two variables which contribute less than one variable would to try tracking down the problem. One is that Windows 10 is in English on that PC. One is that the Session Manager extension is not installed on that PC.

[reallyuniquename]

Fortunately, I can't reproduce this but I don't see any details either.

What exactly is broken? Is it crashed session recovery or manual saving/loading? Previous session restoration?

[nxdiamond]

Windows 10 rebooted. Before rebooting, Waterfox had 40 windows with 2636 tabs open. I though I used Session Manager to save the entire session, but more on this in a moment. After rebooting, Waterfox migrated itself to version 2021.06 and reopened with 1 window and 1 tab which was the start tab. Ordinarily Waterfox automatically invokes Session Manager and I can choose to reopen the crashed session, but this time Waterfox just sat there. I used the Tools menu to invoke Session Manager and selected the crashed session with 40 windows with 2636 tabs, but Session Manager did nothing and Waterfox sat there with 1 window and 1 tab which was the start tab. I used the Tools menu to invoke Session Manager and intended to select the session that I had saved before rebooting, but Session Manager said the saved session and 1 window with 1 tab open. Session Manager said earlier sessions were saved correctly (numerous windows and tabs) but Session Manager wouldn't reopen old sessions.

When I found how to download the installer for version 2021.04.1 and migrated Waterfox back to that, Session Manager obeyed my request to reopen the crashed session with 40 windows with 2636 tabs. I was lucky.

As mentioned, on a different computer with English language Windows and without Session Manager, the migration to 2021.06 reopened its 1 window with 32 tabs. The problem didn't reproduce on that PC.

So as mentioned, I don't know if 2021.06 broke compatibility with Session Manager or if 2021.06 broke compatibility with non-English Windows systems.

As mentioned, if you read comments on https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-2021.06-release/#commento-login-box-container you'll see that the problem reproduces for others.

Some time ago Firefox dropped support for some kind of plugin API but Waterfox didn't. This allowed Session Manager to keep running in Waterfox after it stopped working in Firefox. Now Session Manager still thinks it's running in 2021.06 but it doesn't work properly.

To reproduce, it might help if you install Session Manager.

[kswartz26]

+1 : I have Session Manager installed and after upgrading from 2021.04.2 to 2021.06, it does not restore my previous session. To add to above comments, if I try to manually load any previous session, nothing happens.

I concur with the previous comment in thinking this is an incompatibility with Session Manager, specifically. (My system is English/Windows 10, so it's not that.) I am able to reproduce it consistently, but have to keep downgrading so I can get my work done. I will install 2021.06 on a separate machine this weekend so I do some isolated testing and dig through the console for errors.

However, I will note that I also have Tab Groups installed. I will do more testing this weekend to see if it's possible to restore the tabs from that Options panel, but Tab Groups uses SM when present, and the screenshot above suggests that user did not have SM installed. So I don't think it will make a difference but I'll still give it a try.

[reallyuniquename]

To speed things up you'd have to test this on clean and fresh profile. Browser console (Ctrl+Shift+J) might have some usefull logs.

Also could you manually check your session files that you are unable to load and see if they are corrupted?

I vaguely remember that for crash recovery Session Manager piggybacks on native session restore mechanism meaning it just pulls files from /sessionstore-backups saved by Firefox itself. Not sure about previous session loading though, there might be something similar.

@nxdiamond

Ordinarily Waterfox automatically invokes Session Manager and I can choose to reopen the crashed session

Did Waterfox actually crash before when you were rebooting your system?

@kswartz26

if I try to manually load any previous session, nothing happens

Are any of those sessions manually saved? Does it save and load new sessions?

[nxdiamond]

When I manually saved sessions up to around version 2021.02, the sessions appeared to be saved properly. When I manually saved a session in probably 2021.04.2, it saved 1 window containing 1 tab instead of my actual session, but I didn't notice because I had never needed to check before. When probably 2021.04.2 crashed before Windows 10 rebooted, the crashed session was saved properly, though I understand that saving might have been done by Waterfox itself instead of by Session Manager.

After Windows 10 rebooted, Waterfox migrated itself to 2021.06. 2021.06 displayed 1 window containing 1 tab (the start tab) and did not try to restore a crashed session and did not automatically invoke Session Manager. When I manually invoked Session Manager and tried to recover the crashed session, Session Manager did nothing. When I manually invoked Session Manager and looked at manually saved sessions, I saw that the latest manual save in probably 2021.04.2 only saved 1 window containing 1 tab but older manual saves in older Waterfox versions had saved properly.

After reinstalling 2021.04.1, Session Manager properly restored the crashed session from before Windows 10 rebooted, which was saved by probably 2021.04.2.

Now that I think about it, where I said probably 2021.04.2, it might have actually been 2021.4.1 or 2021.4.

Several years ago, under Windows 7, I found that Firefox and Waterfox reliably remembered their windows and tabs after a crash, but other browsers did not. In those days Firefox was 32-bit only and it crashed more frequently than Waterfox, so I made the right choice of browser. I think my reason for installing Session Manager was that sometimes I had to restore all except one tab, where a malicious advertisement took over a tab and destroyed the tab's history (what URL did I really open) and made the tab uncloseable etc. I could use Task Manager to kill Waterfox and use Session Manager to reopen all except the infected tab.

I don't manually close a Waterfox session because I'm afraid it would not save its session the way a crash does. Even when Session Manager used to perform manual save operations correctly, I still had the habit of using Task Manager to kill Waterfox and make it look like a crash, in order to get my session restored after Windows reboots.

[reallyuniquename]

So you've been repeatedly terminating Waterfox... to save sessions? And your older sessions were already corrupted. Handmade crash coupled with simultaneous migration to the new version is a recipe for disaster.

I'm not even sure this involves Session Manager at all. Like I said crash recovery is mostly internal thing.

Have you actually tried to manually save your session, verify that file is valid, gracefully exit Waterfox, update it and then restore your session?

[nxdiamond]

My older sessions were not corrupted. 2021.04.1 opened them. After I reinstalled 2021.04.1 overwriting 2021.06, 2021.04.01 opened the crashed session that 2021.06 didn't reopen.

kswartz26 in this thread reproduced the problem, and commenters on page https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-2021.06-release/#commento-login-box-container reproduced the problem.

I can't manually save a session in 2021.06 in order to experiment with gracefully exiting Waterfox and updating and restoring. In probably 2021.04.2, when I thought I manually saved a session, it appeared to work but it didn't. The last successful manual save of a session was probably in 2021.02.

I suppose I could install Windows 10 into a virtual PC, install 2021.02, install Session Manager, copy Session Manager's files to the virtual PC, open the last manually saved session from probably 2021.02, save it again, gracefully exit Waterfox, migrate to 2021.06, and try to open the new manually saved session and/or the last manually saved session from before. But I think we have enough repros of Session Manager not working under 2021.06.

[reallyuniquename]

If none of you older sessions were corrupted then how come you had at least one with just 1 tab saved back in 2021.04.2?

My point is you should never rely on automatic session restore whether browser crashed or was gracefully closed (especially if you are going to upgrade it right after the crash).

I can't manually save a session in 2021.06

That's not what I'm suggesting. You've already downgraded to 2021.04 and recovered your tabs, right? Can you manually save your session now and verify the file is valid?

I think we have enough repros of Session Manager not working under 2021.06

Right now we have none.

[nxdiamond]

My OLDER sessions were not corrupted. The one which had just 1 tab saved was the last session I saved, not an older one.

I do not RELY on automatic session restore. Several times in the past I manually restored a previously saved session, which worked in the past but not in 2021.06.

In order to test manually saving a session in 2021.04 and manually restoring it, I will have to install Windows 10 in a virtual PC and proceed as described in my previous message. I don't want to take unnecessary risks with the PCs that I use daily. Obviously there is some risk with the PCs that I use daily, since I thought I had a big disaster with 2021.06, but I don't want to add to the risk.

Repros of the problem in 2021.06 were reported in this thread by kswartz26 and in the other page by a few users.

[reallyuniquename]

You clearly rely on automatic session saving since you literally terminate Waterfox to "save" sessions which probably doesn't even involve Session Manager addon.

The one which had just 1 tab saved was the last session I saved, not an older one

You saved it with 2021.04.2 so it's an old one.

I will have to install Windows 10 in a virtual PC

You can just run portable version on the same PC.

Repros of the problem in 2021.06 were reported in this thread by kswartz26

There is nothing reproducible here right now. Unless someone is willing to isolate whatever's going wrong with your setup there isn't much devs can do.

[kswartz26]

@kswartz26

if I try to manually load any previous session, nothing happens

Are any of those sessions manually saved? Does it save and load new sessions?

I tested on an automatically saved and a manually saved session. Neither one was able to be restored - no error, no action at all. I didn't try saving a new one; I will attempt that next. I will also test with a fresh profile to see if that produces any different results.

[kswartz26]

If none of you older sessions were corrupted then how come you had at least one with just 1 tab saved back in 2021.04.2?

I can answer this. Here is what happens:

2021.04.2 exited with 10 tabs, session is saved automatically. Browser is upgraded to 2021.06 2021.06 starts, but fails to load session - it only shows the startup tab. User exits 2021.06, _session is saved automatically. (So I now realize I've half-answered the question posed to me before. SM does appear to be auto-saving correctly in 2021.06, just not loading.) User downgrades to 2021.04.02 Browser starts up and restores last session, which was just the one tab loaded in 2021.06.

My point is you should never rely on automatic session restore whether browser crashed or was gracefully closed (especially if you are going to upgrade it right after the crash).

To be fair, this comes across as a bit of deflection. Yeah, nobody should RELY on this behavior, especially if the browser crashes. But at the same time, I (and countless other users, I'm sure) have seen it work without issue hundreds if not thousands of consecutive times, across dozens of releases. The fact that multiple people are reporting it doesn't work now -- even when trying to manually load sessions that were cleanly saved -- is pretty strong evidence it's not a case of "bad user behavior".

That said, I will still work on setting up an environment to come up with a smaller reproducible case.

It's not unreasonable to rule out the possibility that a corruption exists in SM session filse, and the browser can handle that corruption in 2021.04.2, but not 2021.06.

[reallyuniquename]

If I'm reading first posts right then the opposite happened. After the downgrade crash recovery form popped up with all tabs present.

The fact that multiple people are reporting it doesn't work now -- even when trying to manually load sessions that were cleanly saved

I'm yet to see anyone try to manually load properly saved session from 2021.04 in new clean profile on 2021.06 and fail.

"bad user behavior"

It's not bad, it's just reckless.

[nxdiamond]

I did not RELY on automatically loading a crashed session. It usually worked but when it didn't work I manually loaded a manually saved session. Manual loads of saved sessions worked until a few days ago (and automatic loads of crashed sessions usually worked though I did not RELY on it), but it doesn't work in 2021.06. I reported that BOTH automatic and manual loads did nothing and did not load. I reported that a reinstallation of 2021.04.1 worked.

However, a manual save in probably 2021.04.2 only pretended to work, it really only saved 1 window with 1 tab, so maybe 2021.02 might have been the last fully working version.

The entire reason for installing Session Manager in the first place, some years ago, was so that I would not RELY on automatically loading a crashed session in whatever old Waterfox versions I used in Windows 7.

[kswartz26]

I'm yet to see anyone trying to manually load properly saved session from 2021.04 in new clean profile on 2021.06 and fail.

This makes no sense to me. If it’s a new, clean profile, you would have no saved sessions from an older versions to restore.

[kswartz26]

I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to do testing, but I tested with a brand new profile, a "test" profile that I've had for a while, and a copy of my existing one. All of them had Session Manager and Tab Groups installed. (I intended to test the clean profile without it, but apparently I forgot.)

The things I tested matched what silentbrains did in his latest post, and my findings were mostly identical in all but the test profile. Session Manager would not restore sessions in the clean profile and in my default profile, but Tab Groups would. I was able to restore a variety of sessions that way, from crashes, clean exits, and manual saves. But the SM dialog would not recover any. Also, while the tabs did not restore after the upgrade itself, they do restore fine after a clean exit/restart in 2021.06.

The one exception was my test profile, in which I WAS able to load older sessions. My previous session there was just my default home page, so I can't say whether any tabs were "lost" during the upgrade.

Probably not much more help in narrowing it down, but I think there is at least a fairly consistent workaround, and it may just be a one-time upgrade bug.

[RoyiAvital]

How do people here get the Portable version for 2021.06? I can't find it on the site.

[Kreiri]

I have a similar problem where Waterfox doesn't "show windows and tabs from the last time" and I have to hope "restore previous session" menu item is not greyed out after updating to 2021.06.