Do you make sure you close Firefox properly (File -> Quit) and that there aren't problems with writing sessionstore.jsonlz4 ?

Did you visit all pinned tabs to see whether that makes a difference ?

Try the Firefox version from the official Mozilla server if you currently use a version from the repositories of your Linux distribution.

Yes, I have been closing FireFox using the File->Quit menu option. I also made sure all the FireFox processes had stopped normally.

The filesystem has plenty of space available (inodes,datablocks,etc) and the perms on the directory are good that house sessionstore.js.

IIRC, all my pinned tabs came up as blank, except for the tab icons. Luckily, I was able to remember what most of the sites were, just by looking at the tab icons.

I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 and updated via the normal apt software updater. I'll try another firefox quit/start and if the problem persists, I'll try the distribution from mozilla.

My tabs are still restoring as blank. Very frustrating.

I'll give the mozilla distribution a try and if not, I guess I'll switch back to Chrome/Chromium.

You can check the sessionstore.jsonlz4 file with this tool.

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

You can get current session data with code in the Browser Console while Firefox is running (this includes Private Browsing mode windows). To enable the command line in the Console:

• select "Enable browser chrome and add-on debugging toolboxes" in the developer tools settings (F1 in the Web Console or Inspector)
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Tools/Settings
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Tools/Browser_Console

/* Session data - Get/Set State */
ssj = SessionStore.getBrowserState(); // get Current Session State
ssj = prompt("Copy Current Session State\n\nPaste New Session State: press ESC or click Cancel to abort", ssj||"");
if(ssj){SessionStore.setBrowserState(ssj)}

I checked out the scrounger and sure enough, it shows:

Tab 5

about:blank [3/19/2020, 6:01:23 PM] about:blank

Tab 8

about:blank [3/17/2020, 12:21:54 PM] about:blank

What exactly am I looking for when looking at the current session data? I've enabled that setting in the Web Console settings, but don't know how this is going to help me with my pinned tabs breaking.

You could possibly use that code in the Browser Console (NOT the Web Console) to get this session data.

Were all the (pinned) tabs showing properly when you closed that last session, so sessionstore.jsonlz4 should have created a valid file ?

Are the files in the sessionstore-backups folder corrupted as well if you check that in the Scrounger tool or in the mozlz4-edit extension ?

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/mozlz4-edit/ ?

Well, looks like back to memory-hog chrome for me. I switched to Mozilla's firefox distribution and I've got crashing tabs and the infuriating blank pinned tabs. I didn't even have to restart to have my pinned tabs go blank.

You can create a new profile as a quick test to see if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile

When I ran the mozilla distribution, it automatically created a new profile. I spent the time recreating all my pinned tabs and the same issue occurred.