How do I get firefox to stop asking me if I want to restore my session, every time it starts?

January 22, 2007 11:15 AM

I use Firefox on a laptop running Ubuntu, and I typically start Firefox several times a day. I'd like it to stop asking me if I want to restore my previous session, which it is presuming crashed, when in fact I had only shut down my machine in the normal way.

This dialog is not useful to me as I never actually want to restore my session, so this is just fluff getting in the way. There doesn't seem to be a Preferences setting for it anywhere. Any ideas?

posted by ephemerae to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Best answer: This site gives the following instructions:

1. type about:config in your browser URL
2. go to the browser.sessionstore.enabled setting
3. change the setting to false
posted by lorimt at 11:28 AM on January 22, 2007

Best answer: Are you using Tab Mix Plus? In Tab Mix Plus Options, there's a Session settings panel.
posted by glibhamdreck at 12:59 PM on January 22, 2007

lorimt has it. Or you can just manually close firefox before you shut down.
posted by subtle_squid at 1:03 PM on January 22, 2007

Seconding the use of tab mix plus as an option. Its a great extension anyway. And it will allow you do do exactly what you want.
posted by gergtreble at 1:19 PM on January 22, 2007

odinsdream's answer is probably the most correct. On most Linux/Unix systems, the shutdown init scripts will send a kill command to each process, which by default is a "TERM" signal. TERM tells the process to quit itself. It's possible that Ubuntu is sending a KILL signal, which forcibly kills the processes, eliminating any chance of a clean shutdown of them. Or, it's possible that it takes too long for Firefox to close itself down (it sometimes takes 3-5 seconds for the process to go away on my box when I tell it to close. Prolly 'cause it's using so much memory). In those instances, init might have given up and assumed any remaining processes are hung and need to be killed before shutdown.

In either case, either close Firefox before shutting down or follow the instructions given by lorimt.
posted by Spoonman at 1:31 PM on January 22, 2007

I'm having the same problem on WinXP. I shut down the computer by pressing the power button on the PC, which initiates the Windows shutdown (i.e. it doesn't just cut the power).
I don't have the browser.sessionstore.enabled value in about:config; the closest I have is browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once and that's already false.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:35 PM on January 22, 2007

Response by poster: I just installed Tab Mix Plus. Very awesome, does the job nicely. Thanks all!
posted by ephemerae at 2:12 PM on January 22, 2007

EndsOfInvention, do you have at least v2.0 of Firefox? The session save feature is new in that version. If not, you might have the Tab Mix Plus extension installed as that provides similar functionality. Interesting that you're having the problem on XP, too. It's either a bug in Firefox, or else it's what I mentioned about how long it takes FF to shut itself down. OSes will only wait so long for an app to close. :)
posted by Spoonman at 6:00 PM on January 22, 2007

Don't see this on my work desktop (FF 2, Edgy 6.10)... are you shutting down FF and then immediately turning off the system? Give the program a second to close. Or, try simply hibernating it rather than shutting it down, which will be the same in terms of power consumption (but will come back up more quickly).
posted by caution live frogs at 7:45 PM on January 22, 2007

Spoonman: Yep, using FF2.0.0.1. I guess it's Windows shutting down too quick, then.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:49 PM on January 23, 2007

Note that if the browser.sessionstore.enabled setting doesn't exist in about:config, you can right-click, choose New from the popup menu and click Boolean to create it.
posted by cb at 4:27 PM on January 23, 2007