- Kusonjululiwe
I think something has become corrupted in my sync data and is now causing Firefox to nuke my browsing sessions
Yesterday, I noticed after I closed and re-opened Firefox, my browsing session was completely gone - all my tabs and windows, my entire browsing history, website sign-in … (funda kabanzi)
Yesterday, I noticed after I closed and re-opened Firefox, my browsing session was completely gone - all my tabs and windows, my entire browsing history, website sign-in status, all completely gone. I've been troubleshooting since then.
I've noticed that the 'sessionstore-backups' folder in my profile folder is missing. When I open Firefox, this folder is created and Firefox writes some data to it, but Firefox seems to delete the folder as soon as I quit Firefox. Firefox should not be doing this. My Firefox is configured to open previous windows and tabs, and is NOT configured to wipe any browsing data of any kind when it closes.
As a sanity check, I spun up a Windows Sandbox (briefly, it's a clean, isolated Windows environment) and installed Firefox there. I also enabled the option 'Open previous windows and tabs'. Firefox behaves normally - it re-opens the tabs/windows I had open when I quit Firefox. Great, that's what I expect. The trouble starts as soon as I sign in to sync. After signing in to sync, and letting the initial sync process complete, I open a couple of windows and tabs, then quit Firefox. Firefox begins nuking my browsing session again - the 'sessionstore-backups' folder is erased, and next time I start Firefox, all my windows and tabs are missing, and my browsing history is missing.
So, at this point, I'm assuming something in my synced data has become corrupt. I haven't installed any new extensions lately. I haven't changed any of Firefox's settings that would cause this to happen. The only thing I have done differently lately was enable Firefox Sync in LibreWolf and sign in to sync there. It seems like this session-nuking trouble started after I signed in to sync in LibreWolf. I assumed, since LibreWolf is a fork of Firefox, and because there were no warnings or indications the feature was incomplete/unstable/experimental/etc., that it would just work, that it wouldn't cause any issues. But it seems like it has caused issues. I checked LibreWolf's issues tracker for anything related to 'sync', but I didn't see anything noteworthy.
I've been using Firefox and Sync for numerous years without issue. This session-nuking thing started yesterday.
I use Firefox in a few places, and based on what I saw happen in my Windows Sandbox, this session-nuking issue is going to happen in every Firefox I'm signed in to as soon as it has a chance to sync. Obviously, I do not want this to happen.
What can I do to determine what the issue is? What can I do to check if something in my synced data has become corrupted? What can I do to reverse it? I'm not opposed to completely wiping/resetting my synced data, but I'd rather not if I don't have to. The only thing I would lose sleep over is my bookmarks, but I know I can export them. Are there any debug logs I can enable/look at? Anything I should look for in Event Viewer?
Thanks.