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Firefox keeps crashing on multiple opened tabs (500+) after update from 42 to 43.0.2

  • 12 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by mixmax

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After update and restart my Firefox keeps crashing on a previous session consisting of I suspect that sessionstore.js got corrupted, I have previous.js though, which, being few weeks old, should be my last resort But renaming it still leads to crash... and I need my tabs back.

Is there any way to load URLS in portions/ automatically fix session info in Firefox? Is there any way to extract all URLs from those files? Is there any way to generate a "healthy" sessionstore.js from list of URLs afterwards? What are exactly those previous.js / recovery.bak / recovery.js / upgrade.js files in Profiles folder and when they are created (as of now I can only guess based on timestamps)?

After update and restart my Firefox keeps crashing on a previous session consisting of I suspect that sessionstore.js got corrupted, I have previous.js though, which, being few weeks old, should be my last resort But renaming it still leads to crash... and I need my tabs back. Is there any way to load URLS in portions/ automatically fix session info in Firefox? Is there any way to extract all URLs from those files? Is there any way to generate a "healthy" sessionstore.js from list of URLs afterwards? What are exactly those previous.js / recovery.bak / recovery.js / upgrade.js files in Profiles folder and when they are created (as of now I can only guess based on timestamps)?

Chosen solution

mixmax said

I resolved my issue by doing the following: 1. cleaned up my FF profile /sessionstore-backups folder 2. Put there my recovery.bak I wanted to recover tabs from + renamed and copied this as sessionstore.js to the FF profile 3. Run FF in safe mode Apparently, looks like my sessions got somehow recursively nested during preceding crash - I had "recover session" tab + gazillion of empty tabs to the right (~670) 4. Closed all the empty tabs via "Close tabs to the right" from context menu and clicked on "Recover session" - another "recover session" tab + number of empty tabs (~400) to the right opened. 5. Closed all the empty tabs again, recovered the session again - and VOILA! my tabs from about 10 days ago are here! Just've rechecked recovery.bak - and it shrank to 5.5MB from almost 10MBs Thank you everyone for assistance! If any of Mozilla dev guys are reading this - please implement better built-in session manager/parser for heavy users like me. Have a great holidays ;)

Hmmm... not that quick :( Tried restarting FF in normal mode and it still keeps crashing.

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All Replies (12)

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Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web Link} by holding down the <Shift>
(Mac=Options)
key, and then starting Firefox. Is the problem still there?

While still in Safe Mode,

In the address bar, type about:crashes<enter>. Note: If any reports do not have BP in front of the numbers/letters, click it and select Submit.

The crash report is several pages of data. We need the report numbers to see the whole report.

Using your mouse, mark the most resent 7 - 10 crash reports, and copy them. Now go to the reply box below and paste them in.

aboutcrashesFx29

If you can't get Firefox to open, you will have to do this the hard way. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter Open the file browser / explorer on your computer. Note: You may have to enable Show Hidden Folders / Files. Enter this in the address bar;

Windows: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports\submitted Win 7/Vista: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports\submitted Win XP/2000: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports\submitted

Mac OS: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Crash Reports/submitted Linux: /home/<username>/.mozilla/firefox/Crash Reports/submitted

Copy the last 5-7 Recent File Names in the folder. Post the information in the reply box below.

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Hi FredMcD, THanks for getting back to me! I'm tech-savvy enough to manually clean up Firefox profile folder and get it starting, though as mentioned above I can't get it load my previous sessions. I've installed http://sessionmanager.mozdev.org/ after recent crash.

here are latest crash reports I've submitted: Report ID Date Submitted bp-efa2ce1f-fabc-4e3f-995b-83bb72151223 22.12.2015 23:44 bp-3d5effa6-3d02-4eac-87a6-493272151222 22.12.2015 18:24 58f418f6-b61c-4fa1-b99b-533c3be4b888 12.12.2015 10:42 some more context : 1) I believe crash on Dec 12 is somewhat unrelated, just may be due to the number of opened tabs - that was happening periodically to me, unfortunately... 2) I don't have crash reporting enabled by default, thus the reason for only 2 reports but the problem is still there and I can reproduce it easily if needed - I have a backup of /sessionstore-backups folder contents 3) Let me know if you'd like me to run FF with any debug keys/parameters if this may help

thanks

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You will normally find these files in the sessionstore-backups folder:

previous.js (cleanBackup: copy of sessionstore.js from previous session that was loaded successfully)
recovery.js (latest version of the sessionstore written during runtime)
recovery.bak (previous version of the sessionstore written during runtime)
upgrade.js-<build_id> (backup created during an upgrade of Firefox)

You can copy a file from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main profile and rename the file to sessionstore.js to replace the current file (make a backup copy of the current sessionstore.js).

See also:

Emergency Firefox Session Restore:

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cor-el said

Emergency Firefox Session Restore:

Thanks for info on backup files. Funny enough - I don't see sessionstore.js in my profile folder at all (only really old and outdated sessionstore.bak)

I have tried heroku web-app but it just crashes (most likely because of the size of the input) my recovery.bak/recovery.js are both >9Mb each

So unfortunately not much progress as of now. I have tried running FF in safe mode but it simply opens empty tab and does not pick up previous session. I can also run FF with plugins enabled too (and manually tried disabling rapportive) - but when I try to make it pick up my backup session it still crashes.

Any ideas? Still hoping to get it to work but I'd like at least to automatically parse my backup .json and get a list of URLs in human-readable format.

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A possible way to inspect a sessionstore.js file or a file in the sessionstore-backups folder is opening the file in a Firefox tab and evaluate this JavaScript code in the Web Console (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer). Paste the code in the command line of the Web Console and press the Enter key to evaluate the code.


eval("ss = "+document.body.innerHTML.replace("<pre>","").replace("</pre>",""));
sd='';
for (var i = 0; i < ss.windows[0].tabs.length; i++) {
 var ent = ss.windows[0].tabs[i].entries;
 var last = ent[ent.length-1];
 sd+="["+(i+1)+"]:"+"<a href="+last.url+">"+last.url+"</a><br />";
}
document.body.innerHTML=sd;

You can look at this MozillaZine forum thread about inspecting a sessionstore file and extract URLs.

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cor-el said

A possible way to inspect a sessionstore.js file or a file in the sessionstore-backups folder is opening the file in a Firefox tab and evaluate this JavaScript code in the Web Console (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer). Paste the code in the command line of the Web Console and press the Enter key to evaluate the code.
eval("ss = "+document.body.innerHTML.replace("<pre>","").replace("</pre>",""));
sd='';
for (var i = 0; i < ss.windows[0].tabs.length; i++) {
 var ent = ss.windows[0].tabs[i].entries;
 var last = ent[ent.length-1];
 sd+="["+(i+1)+"]:"+"<a href="+last.url+">"+last.url+"</a><br />";
}
document.body.innerHTML=sd;

You can look at this MozillaZine forum thread about inspecting a sessionstore file and extract URLs.

Thanks, I've updated to latest 43.0.3 build but when tried to open my previous session FF crashed badly (see attached).

Tried to run your script in web console but got TypeError: last is undefined

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I can privately share my recovery.js if you'd like to have a look (especially if this may help to avoid FF crashes in the future).

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Did you open a sessionstore file in this Firefox tab before opening the Web Console and running the code?

If that isn't working then the file is possibly corrupted.

There is other JavaScript code one page back (page 3) in the mozillaZine thread that you can try.

You need to create a bookmark and paste the code in the location field to avoid security errors (i.e. do not use the Web Console).

javascript:(function(){var D=document,H,i=j=0,P=D.getElementsByTagName('pre'),t=[],R=/[^:]\{"entries":\[\{("url":"([^"]*)")\,("title":"([^"]*)"){0,1}/g,T,U;for(j=0;E=P[j];j++){H=E.innerHTML;while(R.exec(H)){U=RegExp.$2;T=RegExp.$4;if(T.length==0){T=U;}t.push('<b>['+(++i)+']</b> <a href='+U+'>'+T+' ('+U+')<\/a>');}}with(window.open().document){write(t.join('<br>\n'));close()}})();
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I resolved my issue by doing the following:

1. cleaned up my FF profile /sessionstore-backups folder 2. Put there my recovery.bak I wanted to recover tabs from + renamed and copied this as sessionstore.js to the FF profile 3. Run FF in safe mode

Apparently, looks like my sessions got somehow recursively nested during preceding crash - I had "recover session" tab + gazillion of empty tabs to the right (~670)

4. Closed all the empty tabs via "Close tabs to the right" from context menu and clicked on "Recover session" - another "recover session" tab + number of empty tabs (~400) to the right opened.

5. Closed all the empty tabs again, recovered the session again - and VOILA! my tabs from about 10 days ago are here!

Just've rechecked recovery.bak - and it shrank to 5.5MB from almost 10MBs

Thank you everyone for assistance! If any of Mozilla dev guys are reading this - please implement better built-in session manager/parser for heavy users like me. Have a great holidays ;)

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Chosen Solution

mixmax said

I resolved my issue by doing the following: 1. cleaned up my FF profile /sessionstore-backups folder 2. Put there my recovery.bak I wanted to recover tabs from + renamed and copied this as sessionstore.js to the FF profile 3. Run FF in safe mode Apparently, looks like my sessions got somehow recursively nested during preceding crash - I had "recover session" tab + gazillion of empty tabs to the right (~670) 4. Closed all the empty tabs via "Close tabs to the right" from context menu and clicked on "Recover session" - another "recover session" tab + number of empty tabs (~400) to the right opened. 5. Closed all the empty tabs again, recovered the session again - and VOILA! my tabs from about 10 days ago are here! Just've rechecked recovery.bak - and it shrank to 5.5MB from almost 10MBs Thank you everyone for assistance! If any of Mozilla dev guys are reading this - please implement better built-in session manager/parser for heavy users like me. Have a great holidays ;)

Hmmm... not that quick :( Tried restarting FF in normal mode and it still keeps crashing.

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Ok, finally got it resolved after restarting in safe mode again, updating Flash, clearing up cache and closing a few dozens of tabs...