[SOLVED] [Xfce] firefox-esr keeps reloading previous tabs on startup

[Mike Kupfer <m.kupfer@acm.org>]

Thanks to everyone for your comments.  The problem appears to be caused
by this entry in /usr/share/xfce4/helpers/firefox.desktop:

  X-XFCE-Commands=%B -remote "openURL(about:blank,new-window)";%B;

Copying that file to $HOME/.local/share/xfce4/helpers/firefox.desktop
and changing that line to

  X-XFCE-Commands=%B;

makes the problem go away.

Bug #779330 looks relevant.

For those who are curious, here are some additional notes on how I
tracked it down:

Running

  $ strace -f -o ~/Desktop/exo-open.trace exo-open --launch WebBrowser

showed a reference to the firefox.desktop file mentioned above.  This
line seemed suspicious:

  X-XFCE-Commands=%B -remote "openURL(about:blank,new-window)";%B;

And doing

  firefox -remote "openURL(about:blank,new-window)"

from the shell would fail.

A quick web search failed to tell me what "%B" does, so I changed the
line to

  X-XFCE-Commands=%B;%B;

That made the problem go away.

The strace output also showed that the

  firefox -remote "openURL(about:blank,new-window)"

process was failing (exit(1)), and then a second attempt was made to start
firefox, but without the '-remote "openURL(about:blank,new-window)"'.
That one succeeds.  So I guess the failure of the first process is what
triggers the crash recovery behavior.

It then occurred to me to check my Stretch system, and it did not have
the problem.  Its firefox.desktop has

  X-XFCE-Commands=%B;

so that's what I'm now using.

cheers,
mike