Category: SL Tech

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

• The SLS (main) channel on Tuesday, November 5th, leaving it on server release 2019-10-26T00:06:48.532192, previously released on October 30th and comprising:
  • A previously released hotfix to fix teleports being 5%-7% less reliable.
  • A change that makes the simulator take a little bit longer to report as “Up” to the Lab’s internal tools to more accurately reflect when residents can actually access a region.
• There is a single RC deployment planned for Wednesday, November 6th: version 2019-11-01T18:02:37.532376, which is essentially a rebuild of 532143, originally deployed on Wednesday, October 30th and containing the above updates as well. No release had been released at the time of writing.

Note: a second RC deployment, 532377, comprising an internal update and a script to monitor additional region data during rolls was cancelled after it was discovered in QA it broke script uploading. 

Linden Lab request that if anyone sees messages about “Unable to upload 12345678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab due to the following reason” on a version that isn’t 532377, could they please file a bug report and provide full information of when, where and how they encountered the message. 

SL Viewer

The Ordered Shutdown RC viewer was updated to version 6.3.4.532299 on Monday, November 4th. At the time of writing, the rest of the viewer pipelines remain as follows:

• Current Release version 6.3.3.531811, formerly the Voice RC viewer, dated October 18, promoted October 31 – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • EEP RC viewer, version 6.4.0.532314, November 1.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.4.532273, October 31.
  • Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.3.531784, October 18.
• Project viewers:
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.531949, October 28.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.3.531844, October 21.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16.

Simulator Performance

There are continued reports of simulator performance issues – notably with Mainland regions. The most common description of the problem is that over time, script performance on Full region simulators declines to the point where only around 20% or so of scripts are running per cycle, and the simulator has no spare time, forcing the region holder to submit a ticket requesting a move to a different server. This tends to resolve the problem – at least until the next rolling restart, when the performance degradation starts again.

There appears to be no discernible reason for this. Rider Linden has been making improvements on how scripts – particularly idle scripts – are handled, and at the meeting, Simon Linden noted:

We’ve been looking at scripts and performance and there are some changes in the works that will hopefully help … those are on about 15% of the regions now, and will expand to about 20% tomorrow.

…Rider’s work looked at a bunch of the event distribution code like that, and he made it faster with re-writing it and getting rid of brute-force searching and so on. Of course, that changed some script timing and killed some kittens and pot plants. Sometimes it really hits me what a strange job this is.

The issues have led to speculation that the Lab might be stacking more regions on their servers or are reducing the server resources available to each simulator. Responding to an enquiry on this, Simon indicated that the Lab have not changed either for years. However, he did note the fact that the servers the Lab uses do change, so something may have been introduced to impact performance.

Simulator Deployments

At the time of writing, no deployment notes had been published. However:

• There was no deployment to the SLS (main) channel on Tuesday, October 29th, leaving it on server release 2019-10-03T01:12:11.531528.
• There are two RC deployments planned for Wednesday, October 30th:
  • 2019-10-24T19:07:13.532143, comprising further internal script improvements, internal logging changes and improvements to simulator state saves.
  • 2019-10-26T00:06:48.532192, comprising a previously released hotfix to fix teleports being 5%-7% less reliable and makes the simulator take a little bit longer to report as “Up” to the Lab’s internal tools to more accurately reflect when residents can actually access a region.

SL Viewer

The Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer updated to version 6.4.0.531949 on October 28th. The update brings it to parity with the release viewer, but contains not project updates.

. The rest of the viewer pipelines remain as follows:

• Current Release version 6.3.2.530962, formerly the Vinsanto Maintenance RC viewer, dated September 17th, promoted October 15th – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.3.532031, October 23rd.
  • Ordered Shutdown RC viewer, version 6.3.3.531767, October 21st.
  • Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.3.531784, October 18th.
  • EEP RC viewer, version 6.4.0.530150, August 19th.
• Project viewers:
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.3.531844, October 21st.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th.

Script Event Order

It was asked if the script updates would affect the order in which script events are handled, Rider Linden stated:

Some events have always had priority just by virtue of the order in which they were collected. The order of collection has changed. For instance, sensor events were collected and posted before chat events and then touch events. Chat events are now posted immediately upon processing in the simulator. It should still be FIFO… just don’t bet on what event gets collected when.

In addition, it was noted in regards to event messages:

• Generally, event handling should not to be counted on in any sort of coding since it may change again in the future.
• Link messages:
  • If multiple link messages are sent from a single source to a single receiver script, the ordering should be preserved. Similarly, when using llLinkMessage to send a message from script A to script B in the same prim, they are posted immediately, and the order is maintained.
  • If the same message is sent to link A and then to link B, the order the links get them is not always the same. Similarly, if script A and script C are using llLinkMessage to post to B, all bets are off which gets there first.