I've been searching for how to restore an emacs session, with no luck. I'm looking to restore all previously open buffers, some of which might contain erc, shells, directory listings, files, etc.

Every time I open emacs, I spend a considerable amount of time arranging my buffers; splitting them into rows and columns, opening a shell, arranging irc channels. It takes a while to get onto work.

I've tried adding the following to my init.el

(desktop-save-mode 1)

And then using M-x desktop-save. This only seems to restore files that are open, not shells or anything else running within buffers.

I've also checked the following questions (sorry, not able to post links yet):

Session management in emacs using Desktop library

Emacs session / projects / window management

Emacs: reopen buffers from last session on startup?

And read through:

DeskTop and EmacsSession at emacswiki.org/emacs/SessionManagement

Here's a screenshot example of my emacs session.

A simple answer would be to just focus on real work :P