[tor-bugs] #30565 [Applications/Tor Browser]: roll back to previous version of TBB - saved logins and tabs lost after tor browser bundle upgrade (8.5)

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#30565: roll back to previous version of TBB - saved logins and tabs lost after tor
browser bundle upgrade (8.5)
--------------------------------------------+--------------------------
 Reporter:  rollback-question               |          Owner:  tbb-team
     Type:  defect                          |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Very High                       |      Milestone:
Component:  Applications/Tor Browser        |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                          |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tbb-8.5-issues, tbb-regression  |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                                  |         Points:
 Reviewer:                                  |        Sponsor:
--------------------------------------------+--------------------------

Comment (by acat):

 TLDR: You should be able to get your logins back by opening `about:config`
 page, looking for `security.nocertdb` pref, setting it to `false`, and
 restarting the browser.

 For the saved logins issue, we think we know what happened. It's a bit
 long to explain:

 In Tor Browser there is a preference `security.nocertdb` that is set to
 true by default, in order to make the browser intermediate certificate
 store memory only (no persistence to disk). This is also used for saved
 logins, so these will not work if `security.nocertdb = true`.

 When you select `Tor browser will Remember history` we flip this
 preference to false, to make it consistent with "keep history" mode and
 also to enable features like saving logins to work. Internally, this pref
 change to `security.nocertdb = false` is saved in the browser profile as
 user preference (`prefs.js` file), to override the browser defaults.

 In order to fix the Firefox addons being uninstalled issue (see
 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1548973), we had to change
 the browser default and set `security.nocertdb = false`. We did not expect
 that in your case, since the browser default value now matched your user
 chosen value, the `prefs.js` pref override would be removed for being
 redundant. This eventually meant that when upgrading to 8.5, where we
 switched the default to true, this pref was also wrongly switched to true
 for your case.

 So switching `security.nocertdb = false` should fix this.

 For the tabs issue, I still cannot reproduce. Can you verify if after
 switching this it still happens? Is it persistent (tabs are never kept on
 browser start) or it just happened once (when browser upgraded?)

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30565#comment:7>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online