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session files stop updating, open session is not fresh!

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There is a problem that has haunted me for many years, regardless of the versions of firefox, the bottom line is that when I close the browser after a long work, and open it later, an outdated session is restored, 4-5 hours old, and not the last one. Having watched the "sessionstore-backups" folder and its three files, I found that at some point these files simply stop changing, so the next time the browser is opened, the session is not fresh. Why is this happening, I cannot understand why the session files freeze and do not update despite the fact that I continue to work in firefox ??

There is a problem that has haunted me for many years, regardless of the versions of firefox, the bottom line is that when I close the browser after a long work, and open it later, an outdated session is restored, 4-5 hours old, and not the last one. Having watched the "sessionstore-backups" folder and its three files, I found that at some point these files simply stop changing, so the next time the browser is opened, the session is not fresh. Why is this happening, I cannot understand why the session files freeze and do not update despite the fact that I continue to work in firefox ??

Chosen solution

Hmm, I wonder whether as a backup you might want to try one of the session management extensions to save your open tabs (these don't save the history of the tab, just the current URL). I haven't tested these during the past year, so please check the reviews to make sure they are still working well:

Use database storage:

Use bookmark storage:

Bookmark storage is more robust in that Firefox backs it up regularly. However, having the extra data show up when you are searching your bookmarks may be annoying.

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All Replies (7)

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Hmm, I think another user reported that in recent years, but I don't think we got to the bottom of what was causing it.

By default, Firefox updates the files as often as every 15 seconds, so no change should go unrecorded if you wait at least 15 seconds. Unless the recovery.jsonlz4 file became locked, I can't think of a reason Firefox would stop updating it, but then it might start writing to something like a recovery-1.jsonlz4 to keep saving. Unfortunately, I don't think Firefox automatically reconciles or restores those emergency files so they would just accumulate. Have you ever seen anything like that in your sessionstore-backups folder?

Firefox's Browser Console gathers messages from all over the program, so it's very cluttered, but if you notice that Firefox isn't saving session data, you might pause your activity and open the console and see whether any messages appear relating to the problem at any interval, whether 15 seconds or otherwise. You can open the separate Browser Console window using either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > Web Developer > Browser Console
  • (menu bar) Tools > Web Developer > Browser Console
  • (Windows) Ctrl+Shift+j

More info on the Browser Console: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Tools/Browser_Console


Separately, you could do a manual session export as a backup before closing Firefox. This also uses the Browser Console. I posted the script here: https://gist.github.com/jscher2000/d7c77f90bde6f37f526faa56c6a2b19e

To coax Firefox into using that file at startup, you would need to hide a few things in your profile folder first:

  • rename the sessionstore-backups folder to something like sessionstore-backupsOLD
  • rename sessionstore.jsonlz4 (created at shutdown in the main level of the profile folder) to something like sessionstoreOLD.jsonlz4
  • drop in your exported session file and rename it to sessionstore.js (not .json -- we're using the name from Firefox 55 days)

If you want a more readable record of the session contents, you can load the file into my Scrounger tool, click Scrounge URLs, then click Save List to have an HTML archive with clickable links. https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html

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no, in the sessionstore-backups folder there is nothing but three standard files, but I seem to understand what is the reason, errors in the console indicate a lack of memory, but maybe I'm crazy holding 1000 tabs and there is 3GB of RAM, but it could be like this podkorrestit so that the session is still saved.

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Chosen Solution

Hmm, I wonder whether as a backup you might want to try one of the session management extensions to save your open tabs (these don't save the history of the tab, just the current URL). I haven't tested these during the past year, so please check the reviews to make sure they are still working well:

Use database storage:

Use bookmark storage:

Bookmark storage is more robust in that Firefox backs it up regularly. However, having the extra data show up when you are searching your bookmarks may be annoying.

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ok I'll try, thanks, once upon a time I used add-ons, but this is not quite what I need, opening all 1000 session tabs at once through the add-on leads to the browser crash due to lack of RAM in my system, the paging file (pagefile.sys ) is installed in the system - "By system choice", probably I should reduce the number of tabs. While it would be great if you could report this bug to the Mozilla company, I don't know how to do it.

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I can give you the link to file a bug report, but it may be difficult to replicate the problem because it depends on the amount of free memory, I guess?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

Regarding the extensions, I think you can use them to save your session without an automatic restore. However, as I said, I haven't looked at them for a long time.

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ok, I'll try

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For me RAM is no issue. Firefox is presently consuming 6.5gb of ram, and i got 2x16gb ddr4. m.2 ssd.

I had some problems with windows. My system became slow and after I did a clean up, freezing on cleaning up windows updates. I cleaned up everything except temporary internet files and it resolved the problem after reboot. I then deleted temporary internet files (also rebooted). So now I was able to login or at least I thought so:

Going to File > Reconnect to firefox account > asks me to login > Then it say's I have successfully logged in

Tabs aren't syncing so I go back and it asks me to do the same thing again. So I do, fails again, asks me again. Always says it's sucessful but always asking me to reconnect. Also with disk clean up for temporary internet files it doesn't appear to clean it or it needs the 2gb of temporary data all the time.

I'll try those extensions when I wake up. Thanks for the suggestion.

Modified by zeuscannonz