Have you recently been doing an update? Did you skip a version or two?

Yes, I did an update on a test machine to check if the problem still exists. That profile should contain a few passwords. I am not updating my main machine, which was on version 69 (where the old password list still works).

People have been telling me that version 68esr would be a better choice that version 69, which has no more updates. I would even like to do that, except that firefox itself makes that impossible. If I try to use my profile with version 68, it refuses it and only wants to make a new empty profile. Which of course means that (among all the rest, there is lots of settings in there) I would lose the logins and passwords.

The previous version I tested was on firefox 71. Either that one, or 70, was the one that introduced the about:logins tab.

So it has always been broken for me.

Oh, I saw this question: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1279696 The description looks very similar.

How can I check if this "e10s" (what is the full name?) is disabled for me? I can't find anything that seems to match that abbreviation in the about:buildconfig or about:support pages.

When trying the hint from that link (change the signon.management.overrideURI preference on the about:config page to empty and restart Firefox) I only get 1 (one) login in the Saved Logins I reach from the preferences. It is the one that I made to login to this site.

In my profile, the file "logins.json" contains many many more, but they are not shown, and as far as I can tell, also not used when I go to the related websites.

This is very bad. Worse than I thought, even.

Do you possibly have disabled the multi-process tab feature in Firefox as that can affect Lockwise (about:logins) ?

You can find the current multi-process state on the Troubleshooting Information page (about:support).

• "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" -> "Application Basics":
  Multiprocess Windows
  Remote Processes

See also the Remote Processes section further down for more detail.

Multi-process can only be disabled via an environment variable.

• set MOZ_FORCE_DISABLE_E10S=1

I see this

Multiprocess Windows 0/2 Disabled Remote Processes 0

so they seem to be disabled indeed, but not by me. I don't have any environment variable starting with MOZ, in particular not MOZ_FORCE_DISABLE_E10S.

I do remember reading already some time ago about how the multi-process feature is not reliable on NetBSD. It is possible that it was turned off in the build. For building I use the pkgsrc framework (see https://pkgsrc.se/www/firefox or for more detail, http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/pkgsrc/www/firefox) which automates complicates builds such as that of Firefox. Is there any way to tell if this is the case?

If I look at the about:buildconfig page, I see nothing that jums out to me that either enables or disables this.

Build Configuration Build platform target x86_64--netbsd Build tools Compiler Version Compiler flags /pkg_comp/obj/pkgsrc/wip/firefox69-2019Q4/default/.cwrapper/bin/gcc 9.0.1 -O2 -I/usr/pkg/include/nspr -D_GLIBCXX_INCLUDE_NEXT_C_HEADERS -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -I/usr/pkg/include -I/usr/include -I/usr/pkg/include/nss/nss -I/usr/X11R7/include -I/usr/pkg/include/libdrm -I/usr/pkg/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/pkg/include/gio-unix-2.0 -I/usr/pkg/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/pkg/include/ffmpeg4 -I/usr/pkg/include/freetype2 -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector-strong -fno-strict-aliasing -Dunix -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -fno-math-errno -pthread -pipe -I/usr/pkg/include /pkg_comp/obj/pkgsrc/wip/firefox69-2019Q4/default/.cwrapper/bin/c++ 9.0.1 -Qunused-arguments -I/usr/pkg/include -I/usr/include -I/usr/pkg/include/nspr -I/usr/pkg/include/nss/nss -I/usr/X11R7/include -I/usr/pkg/include/libdrm -I/usr/pkg/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/pkg/include/gio-unix-2.0 -I/usr/pkg/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/pkg/include/ffmpeg4 -I/usr/pkg/include/freetype2 -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector-strong -Qunused-arguments -Wall -Wbitfield-enum-conversion -Wempty-body -Wignored-qualifiers -Woverloaded-virtual -Wpointer-arith -Wshadow-field-in-constructor-modified -Wsign-compare -Wtype-limits -Wunreachable-code -Wunreachable-code-return -Wwrite-strings -Wno-invalid-offsetof -Wclass-varargs -Wfloat-overflow-conversion -Wfloat-zero-conversion -Wloop-analysis -Wc++1z-compat -Wc++2a-compat -Wcomma -Wimplicit-fallthrough -Wstring-conversion -Wtautological-overlap-compare -Wtautological-unsigned-enum-zero-compare -Wtautological-unsigned-zero-compare -Wno-inline-new-delete -Wno-error=deprecated-declarations -Wno-error=array-bounds -Wno-error=backend-plugin -Wno-error=return-std-move -Wno-error=atomic-alignment -Wformat -Wformat-security -Wno-gnu-zero-variadic-macro-arguments -Wno-unknown-warning-option -Wno-return-type-c-linkage -fno-sized-deallocation -O2 -I/usr/pkg/include/nspr -D_GLIBCXX_INCLUDE_NEXT_C_HEADERS -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -I/usr/pkg/include -I/usr/include -I/usr/pkg/include/nss/nss -I/usr/X11R7/include -I/usr/pkg/include/libdrm -I/usr/pkg/include/glib-2.0 -I/usr/pkg/include/gio-unix-2.0 -I/usr/pkg/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/pkg/include/ffmpeg4 -I/usr/pkg/include/freetype2 -D__HAVE_INLINE___ISINF -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector-strong -fno-exceptions -fno-strict-aliasing -Dunix -fno-rtti -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -fno-exceptions -fno-math-errno -pthread -pipe -I/usr/pkg/include -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -funwind-tables /usr/pkg/bin/rustc 1.42.0 Configure options

PYTHON3=/usr/pkg/bin/python3.7 --enable-application=browser --host=x86_64--netbsd --target=x86_64--netbsd --disable-tests --enable-optimize=-O2 CC=gcc CXX=c++ --disable-debug-symbols PKG_CONFIG=/pkg_comp/obj/pkgsrc/wip/firefox69-2019Q4/default/.tools/bin/pkg-config --disable-pulseaudio 'BINDGEN_CFLAGS=-isystem/usr/pkg/include/nspr -isystem/usr/X11R7/include/pixman-1' --enable-system-ffi --enable-chrome-format=flat --with-system-webp --disable-webrtc MAKE=make --disable-crashreporter --disable-dbus --disable-gconf --disable-icf --enable-install-strip --disable-libjpeg-turbo --disable-necko-wifi --enable-system-pixman --disable-updater --prefix=/usr/pkg --with-system-bz2 --with-system-icu --with-system-libevent=/usr/pkg --with-system-nspr --with-system-nss --with-system-zlib

Oops, the above information is actually from a different build (for ff 69). I'm not typing this on the same computer + firefox that has the problem. But maybe it still gives a hint at which option I should look at?