[opensuse] SeaMonkey: "Restore Previous Session" greyed out after crash
This is on openSUSE-13.1, SeaMonkey-2.26.1. SeaMonkey crashed with lots of windows/tabs open, and there are both sessionstore.json and sessionstore.bak files in the assoc profile data. However, when the browser is restarted and the "Restore Session" window comes up, the "Restore Previous Session" option is greyed out and list of Windows and Tabs is empty. The only usable button is "Start New Session". I had quite a bit of stored up state and was preparing to save and/or bookmark most of the saved up pages, most being tech references to things I've been researching recently. I tried renaming the sessionstore.bak file as sessionstore.json, but that gave the same result. I have no other useable sessionstore.json files for that session. As a sanity check, I did try using the sessionstore.json file from another PC and that session started up OK, so I know the problem is not due to a setting in the affected SeaMonkey instance. To help view the JSON, I used json_pp on the sessionstore.json files, and there is a very large blob in the middle of the file that starts with, "formdata":{"#sessionData":"{ which the json_pp does not pretty print, and everything in that blob appears to have extra quoting (lots of backslashes, etc.). Braces, brackets, quotes, etc., are all balanced in the file, i.e., I am not able to identify any corruption in the file. If I run seamonkey from the command line, I get no helpful error messages. Is there a way to force error msgs or debugging info to help debug this? How about how to extract the info directly from the JSON file? Any other ideas? [I'm tearing my hair out trying to fix this!] Any other forums to post to? (I'm not active on any Mozilla related forums presently, and I'm a mostly email list user vs web forum user). Web searches have not brought up much more than how to configure Session Restore, etc. I will post any progress I am able to make on this. Thanks! --Phil -- Philip Amadeo Saeli openSUSE, CentOS, RHEL psaeli@zorodyne.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Philip Amadeo Saeli wrote on 2014-09-30 00:42 (UTC-0500): ...
How about how to extract the info directly from the JSON file?
Any other ideas? [I'm tearing my hair out trying to fix this!] Any other forums to post to? (I'm not active on any Mozilla related forums presently, and I'm a mostly email list user vs web forum user). Web searches have not brought up much more than how to configure Session Restore, etc.
I will post any progress I am able to make on this.
[knock on wood] How often do you back up your profile data? If you're a heavy user, the more often, the better. Sync could serve the backup function if you need it done unusually frequently. It's never happened to me without a backup less than 2 days old in more than a decade of running multiple SM instances with lots of tabs always open, uptime averaging 23.5 hours (I backup the profile 6 or 7 days per week with it closed) with the instance also used for email, and uptime averaging upwards of 10 days in the one also used for IRC. Though it has happened to cause loss of quite a bit in a day or two, that has been very very infrequent. IOW, I think crashing and losing the session history is rather uncommon, though SM crashing here at all has been rather infrequent. All that said, check first to see if maybe there is an extension designed for such recovery. Absent that, mozillazine.org is the place to search to see if there is a howto for this kind of recovery, if one exists. It should be the same for both Firefox and SM. Absent finding those, I see that the json file seems to be all or mostly text but with no newlines. You could sed a copy of it to insert newlines before each instance of https://, http:// or ftp://, then manually remove whatever appears to follow each URL to each EOL. Once you do that, you could email it to yourself as an inline attachment. Then viewing in plain text mode you could click each URL in the email to have it open in a tab or window. You wouldn't have the fwd/back history in each window or tab, but at least you would have the URLs. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
* Felix Miata
Philip Amadeo Saeli wrote on 2014-09-30 00:42 (UTC-0500): ...
How about how to extract the info directly from the JSON file?
Any other ideas? [I'm tearing my hair out trying to fix this!] Any other forums to post to? (I'm not active on any Mozilla related forums presently, and I'm a mostly email list user vs web forum user). Web searches have not brought up much more than how to configure Session Restore, etc.
I will post any progress I am able to make on this.
[knock on wood]
How often do you back up your profile data? If you're a heavy user, the more often, the better. Sync could serve the backup function if you need it done unusually frequently.
Unfortunately, I haven't been backing up my profile data at all. This is the first time I've encountered this problem AFAICR, so I've been rather lazy in this regard. Any recommendations for a non-cloud based backup/sync option?
All that said, check first to see if maybe there is an extension designed for such recovery. Absent that, mozillazine.org is the place to search to see if there is a howto for this kind of recovery, if one exists. It should be the same for both Firefox and SM.
Still looking for info. Didn't think of looking for recovery oriented extensions. Hmmmmm....
Absent finding those, I see that the json file seems to be all or mostly text but with no newlines. You could sed a copy of it to insert newlines before each instance of https://, http:// or ftp://, then manually remove whatever appears to follow each URL to each EOL. Once you do that, you could email it to yourself as an inline attachment. Then viewing in plain text mode you could click each URL in the email to have it open in a tab or window. You wouldn't have the fwd/back history in each window or tab, but at least you would have the URLs.
Thanks for the detailed info. Interesting approach. I was able to pretty-print the JSON so it is more readable and is line-oriented and structured. I am now manually saving the essential info from the JSON file. Is rather time-consuming. It is rather instructive to see how much info is actually in the sessionstore.json file.
Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
--Phil -- Philip Amadeo Saeli openSUSE, CentOS, RHEL psaeli@zorodyne.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
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Philip Amadeo Saeli