[SOLVED] What happened to Firefox's "Restore session" feature?

[RLynwood]

Lately, Fx has crashed a few times, and each time I call it back up again, it comes up blank. I have it set always to remember all tabs. I've known of the "restore session" feature--a real godsend--for a long time. Lately, however, I can't find it. Looking for in on the 'net, I get hits saying it's in History; that were it was before except when it crashed. Then when I called it up it would have a highlighted button-like popup in the upper, right order asking if I want to restore the session. That always got it back, and I was off, continuing from where I'd left off before the crash. Now I can't find a "restore session" link anywhere. Why? What happened to it?

[arsivci]

App menu (rightmost hamburger) > history > restore previous session.
Also,
Alt-key > history > restore previous session.

[RLynwood]

I understand that and looked there first (the hamburger), of course. It is not there; it just isn't there, not top, bottom not in the history list, not even in the "manage history" link. That's why I'm asking here. I hadn't thought of the Menu bar's history, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't there, either.

[claydoh]

Do remember that there won't be a 'restore previous session' option unless you have one to restore. Basically, anything past opening the application. After opening any tabs or pages, the old session is lost.
There are numerous extensions that can save and restore them, though.

A freshly opened browser vs one that have been used:

[RLynwood]

"Do remember that there won't be a 'restore previous session' option unless you have one to restore."
I'm well aware of that. I don't try to restore a previous session unless Fx has crashed, then comes back up without the previous session's tabs. I always select the restore previous session's tabs in the Settings General page: "open previous windows and tabs" when setting up Firefox in the beginning of using it.
And, yes, I've seen the entry you showed (thanks for that clarity) and used it many times. As I said in my initial post in the conversation, that's how I knew it should be there, but it isn't there, has't been there after Fx has crashed while using Kub. in this flash drive.
If I can't solve this problem, maybe I will have to resort to one of those extensions you mentioned.

[claydoh]

after Fx has crashed

If this happened, you may have a corrupt config. Maybe try (re)moving your ~/.mozilla/firefox dir, and see if a fresh profile fixes the UI.

[RLynwood]

Now we're getting somewhere; this looks useful and like it might be on the right track. But it looks scary. A folder labeled "snap" contains a folder each for Firefox and Chromium. Firefox's folder contains four folders labeled 2579, 2605, Common, & Current, and the word 'current' is italicized. Common contains ~/.mozilla/firefox. That contains four folders/directories & a profiles.ini file. The directory <zemdnky6.default> contains 16 directories and lots of files. If I were to delete this Firefox directory, what would replace it? What would prevent that from borking Firefox?

[claydoh]

Deleting, or rather moving/renaming the folder would cause a new empty profile to be created.
the entire .mozilla folder is what you copy to back up your entire Firefox config, bookmarks, extensions, and whatnot.

If you want the specific full path, you can open about:profiles in FF to see this, and even add a new profile if you wanted to play with that. Not sure if that helps in troubleshooting UI issues, though.

The easiest way to test if the profile is borked is to close FF, rename the .mozilla dir that contains your profile, and restart the browser.
If it doesn't work, it is easy-peasy to close FF, delete the newly created directory, and un-rename the original one.

[RLynwood]

Thanks, again. Your suggestion seems to provide what I want. I'll think about it and probably play with it ioto learn about it.
I'm not sure it'll help in troubleshooting my problem, either, but you seem to have had a good idea. Maybe it will solve it.

[Schwarzer Kater]

The interval how often sessions are stored in Firefox is set in milliseconds in -> about:config -> browser.sessionstore.interval .
This should be no different for the Snap version.

The default is 15000 = 15 seconds. If you started Firefox and it crashed immediately it could be possible that a session not has been stored again at this point AFAIK - or the file indeed is corrupted.

Enter a lower value if you want to save your session even more often or a much higher value if you want to reduce the writes on your SSD/USB stick (I have set mine to 600000 = 10 minutes - the last time Firefox crashed on one of my computers was about 5-6 years ago, though).

[RLynwood]

More good advice. Thanks. Not sure now how I'll use it, but I definitely will keep it in mind.

[RLynwood]

P.s. Yeah, I wish I knew why Fx has crashed so many times (~ 3-4) over the last few weeks, since establishing Kub. on the flash drive.

[claydoh]

Fx has crashed so many times (~ 3-4) over the last few weeks

Don't rule out a buggy Firefox. I have seen it go poof! a couple of times on me in the past week or so, and I use the PPA version. But twice for me is not a pattern, just yet.
(I do sometimes live on the edge a little, sometimes, so...who knows)

[RLynwood]

Thanks. I didn't know that Fx had a reputation for bugginess. But your experience seems to match mine for the last few weeks. And that's when I've gotten those blank pages--with no session restore option--when I call it up again. Your experience is very helpful. Glad to know about it.

[bweinel]

Another thing which can potentially cause problems in Firefox is add-ons. I have previously found issues with some add-ons which can cause Firefox to randomly crash. Once the offending add-on has been removed or deactivated... Firefox runs perfectly again. This is particularly a problem with older or 'out-of-date' add-ons installed in newer versions of Firefox.

cheers,
bill