One thing to rule out is simply timing. Firefox updates the session history file with your action (closing two tabs) within 15 seconds. If you are exiting immediately, the update may not be occurring.

(15 seconds is the default. Some users extend the interval to reduce disk writes. But if you had done that, you probably would remember.)

Otherwise... hard to explain, unless you always close those same two tabs just before exiting Firefox.

jscher2000 said

One thing to rule out is simply timing. Firefox updates the session history file with your action (closing two tabs) within 15 seconds. If you are exiting immediately, the update may not be occurring. (15 seconds is the default. Some users extend the interval to reduce disk writes. But if you had done that, you probably would remember.) Otherwise... hard to explain, unless you always close those same two tabs just before exiting Firefox.

It isn't timing.. I've come back to firefox the following day and this issue occurs..

I'm only closing the same tabs that re-open. At first it was two particular tabs that I somehow managed to get to stay gone but now whatever other tabs I may have opened next but then closed will return upon restarting FF..

I can't explain it.

Before your next shutdown, could you take a look at recovery.jsonlz4 to make sure it shows a current date/time stamp (or at least current enough to cover the last changes).

To access that file:

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > 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.

Double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder where you'll find that file. For reference, the various kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:

• recovery.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
• recovery.baklz4: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
• previous.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
• upgrade.jsonlz4-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update

Umm, maybe I misunderstood your scenario.

Maybe you're not saying you browse sites a, b, c, d, and e, close a, b, c, d, and e in that order, and Firefox re-opens d and e at your next startup. Instead, regardless of what you do, you get unwanted tabs 1 and 2 at startup, every startup.

Does it make any difference if you leave one regular tab open when you shut down Firefox, any site will do?

What is your startup setting?

• If you have Firefox set to restore your windows and tabs from your previous session, make sure you do not have an old version of CCleaner from more than 3 months ago.

• If you have Firefox set to start up with your home page(s), double-check the addresses -- Firefox can open multiple tabs if there are multiple URLs separated by vertical bar (|) characters. See: How to set the home page.

jscher2000 said

I can't explain it. Before your next shutdown, could you take a look at recovery.jsonlz4 to make sure it shows a current date/time stamp (or at least current enough to cover the last changes). To access that file: Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > 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. Double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder where you'll find that file. For reference, the various kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:

• recovery.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
• recovery.baklz4: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
• previous.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
• upgrade.jsonlz4-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update

just tested and yes it has up to the minute session restore files here, both the recovery.baklz4 and the previous.jsonlz4

jscher2000 said

Umm, maybe I misunderstood your scenario. Maybe you're not saying you browse sites a, b, c, d, and e, close a, b, c, d, and e in that order, and Firefox re-opens d and e at your next startup. Instead, regardless of what you do, you get unwanted tabs 1 and 2 at startup, every startup. Does it make any difference if you leave one regular tab open when you shut down Firefox, any site will do?

---

What is your startup setting?

• If you have Firefox set to restore your windows and tabs from your previous session, make sure you do not have an old version of CCleaner from more than 3 months ago.

• If you have Firefox set to start up with your home page(s), double-check the addresses -- Firefox can open multiple tabs if there are multiple URLs separated by vertical bar (|) characters. See: How to set the home page.

I tested again and left open one regular tab in addition to my 30+ pinned tabs and closed and then restarted FF.

The one regular tab I opened restored properly but the other 2 regular tabs that won't go away restored again..

I have disabled tab session manager and am only using the built-in session restore, and also a new tab window opens upon each launch of FF, which is fine..

After recovery.jsonlz4 seems to have updated to reflect the two unwanted tabs being closed, could you drag and drop the file onto this tool and scrounge the links to confirm that those tabs show as being in the Closed Tabs group?

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html

I suspect the file is good, but for some reason Firefox is reading it incorrectly at startup. Some very weird reason!

jscher2000 said

After recovery.jsonlz4 seems to have updated to reflect the two unwanted tabs being closed, could you drag and drop the file onto this tool and scrounge the links to confirm that those tabs show as being in the Closed Tabs group? https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html I suspect the file is good, but for some reason Firefox is reading it incorrectly at startup. Some very weird reason!

Yep its showing those unwanted tabs here in the scrounger.

The problem started after I added this copy and paste stuff from here in post #1.

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=144417.0

I even tried removing this newly created "chrome" folder with the script in it to remove the extra tab rows but the problem persisted even after removing this script or whatever its called, so I added it back and am currently using it..

How could this be the problem tho? Could it have been a mix of tab session manager and this script? I had TSM active when I added this script thingy and have since disabled TSM once the issue began..

larrygreen1886 said

Yep its showing those unwanted tabs here in the scrounger.

It's showing them with the open tabs? That's odd. Clearly you closed them, and if the file shows that it was updated after you closed them, they should be below the line with the Closed Tabs.

I don't use pinned tabs, so I don't know if there's some weird interaction when you close all the normal tabs and just leave the pinned tabs.

Could it have been a mix of tab session manager and this script? I had TSM active when I added this script thingy and have since disabled TSM once the issue began..

I don't know what to tell you about Tab Session Manager because I don't know how it works and I don't want to risk trying it (reviews being what they are). However, an extension that has its own session/tab storage is a more likely potential culprit than a style rule which just changes the layout of the tab bar.

Yep, showing them in "open tabs" indeed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The problem is likely from TSM and somehow the issue remains whether the extension is enabled or disabled..

Looks like a fresh FF install is in order.. Thanks for your time and effort.

You could get that going with these steps:

(1) Back up - Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles

(2) Refresh - Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

jscher2000 said

You could get that going with these steps: (1) Back up - Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles (2) Refresh - Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

I will defintely use these steps.. Thanks again

jscher2000 said

You could get that going with these steps: (1) Back up - Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles (2) Refresh - Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

A fresh install of FF got rid of the issue =).

Re-installed my style rule as well for tab rows and all is well. I made a backup of my profile but I merely set up Ff fresh and manually re-installed my add-ons and settings.

Thanks again!

Sounds good, thanks for reporting back.

jscher2000 said

Sounds good, thanks for reporting back.

ok I've got it fixed again, but I may have spoken too soon.. The problem reared its head again so I deleted the tab row style rule again and then re-installed FF once again and now the problem is gone again. Somehow that style hack thing is causing this it seems but like you said that's odd and I have no idea why..

Now the question is how can I get another row for tabs enabled? That scrolling left right tab selector at the end is barely usable for me.

Do you want to try a different set of style rules for multi-row tabs?

https://www.userchrome.org/samples/userChrome-multi_row_tabs.css

jscher2000 said

Do you want to try a different set of style rules for multi-row tabs? https://www.userchrome.org/samples/userChrome-multi_row_tabs.css

I replaced this set of style rules where the original set were located but its not working aka no tab rows.. Do these need to be placed somewhere else?

My bad, you either need to put those rules into your existing userChrome.css file, or if you no longer need the other file, rename the new file to userChrome.css. Then exit Firefox and start it up again to detect the file.

And since Windows may hide the .css extension from you: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-show-file-extensions-in-windows/

jscher2000 said

My bad, you either need to put those rules into your existing userChrome.css file, or if you no longer need the other file, rename the new file to userChrome.css. Then exit Firefox and start it up again to detect the file. And since Windows may hide the .css extension from you: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-show-file-extensions-in-windows/

ok thanks.. well now the tab rows are working but what do you know, the returning normal tabs issue has returned..

Has to be the style rule change somehow... At any rate, I'll just deal with the issue until a proper extension or fix comes along as dealing with the scrolling tabs thing is maddening..

Also, why doesn't FF just support multiple tab rows? So annoying..

Thanks

To submit suggestions for new or changed features, may I suggest: Feedback: https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/ or https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/add-ons

According to some bug reports, sometimes Firefox 56-59 stops being able to update the recovery.jsonlz4 file due to a problem with a background process (a promise worker process). Firefox 58 (due out next week) will contain some fixes for this that hopefully will solve the problem for most people.

If anyone experiences the issue after that, it would be helpful to check the Browser Console for errors messages along these lines:

Could not write session state file Object { operation: "move", path: "C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\1a2b3c4d.default\sessionstore-backups\recovery.jsonlz4", winLastError: 5, stack: "", fileName: "(unknown module)", lineNumber: undefined } SessionFile.jsm:396

That could indicate another variation on the problem that Firefox needs to detect and correct for.