Category: SL User Group Meetings

SL projects updates 19/2: group bans, miscellaneous items

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 19 – Recap

There were no server deployments!

Group Chat

As noted in part one of this report, the group chat updates were deployed to the back-end chat servers on Monday May 5th. The changes to group chat should be subtle, and may not be observable to many. Additional analytics are included in the code, which should provide further pointers on what else may need addressing going forward.

Group Ban Lists

Obligatory Baker Linden shot :)
Obligatory Baker Linden shot 🙂

Baker Linden’s work on adding the ability to ban troublemakers / spammers, etc., from groups with open enrollment is now getting relatively close to becoming available.

Baker has recently closed what is believed to be the last of the server-side issues, BUG-5929. This meant that if the name of the group owner was accidentally added to a list of people to be banned from a group, the ban process would fail, with no-one in the list either being added to the ban list or banned from the group (although other than the group owner, anyone selected for banning would be ejected from the group).

The expected behaviour would be for all those named (other than the group owner) to be added to the ban list, with those who were already members of the group also being ejected and banned. Baker’s fix is to ensure this is now the case, and it should be available shortly on Aditi for testing (channel DRTSIM-234 14.05.05.289712 – which includes the Morris region where the Server Beta meeting is held).

Viewer-wise, a project viewer with the new code is expected to appear very shortly (it was running through the build process during the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May 8th). This should be added to the Alternative Viewers wiki page when available. The repository for the code has now been made public, so TPVs can start looking at it – but again, given the status of the viewer as a project release, don’t expect the code to immediately start popping-up in TPVs.

HOWEVER, it may be a while before the new group ban functionality can be used on the main grid, as there is an initial back-end host code update required prior to anything being deployed to any simulator channel. According to Maestro Linden, the Lab will likely want to run those updates for a week to check for any unexpected regressions prior to putting any simulators on a group ban RC.

In the meantime, the group ban capabilities can be tested on Aditi either using the project viewer (when available) or the existing test viewer.

Other Items

“Welcome to the Hotel California” – BUG-5961

Trying to leave a group with a large membership list can prove problematic if the memebrship list takes time to load
Trying to leave a group with a large membership list can prove problematic if the membership list takes time to load

An old issue recently came to light once more with BUG-5961 (originally entitled “I cannot leave a group that I joined”, but with the description subsequently updated by Maestro to “Viewer attempts full fetch of member list before allowing user to leave group” in order to better reflect his findings following investigation).

It’s not actually clear if this is a one-off situation, or possibly more widespread, as the bug report is specific to the group “Akeyo”.

However, Maestro’s thinking is that the problem is linked to the download of the membership list, which even with the Group Services fixes introduced in late 2012, can still take time to complete with some larger groups.

Essentially, you cannot leave a group until the membership list has been loaded, as the viewer must check to ensure that when leaving, you’re not the last owner of the group. Should the membership list take time to download, this can lead to a temptation to click the Leave button again, causing the download to start-over, resulting in the list not loading, thus preventing you  from leaving it (hence the Hotel California quip, which I admit I stole from Maestro!).

The Lab is looking into this issue further, although it may be a while before any resolution is found. One workaround in the meantime is to run a client such as Radegast, which handles groups slightly differently to the viewer, and use that to leave the offending group.

Restore to Last Position

Restore to Last position was a popular feature which allowed anyone to take content to inventory and then re-rez it later at the same position. While there were issues with the capability (such as using it to rez an object in a different region, with a different topology to the one where it was originally taken back to inventory resutling in an object to “vanish”, as it rezzed underground or something), it was broadly seen as beneficial.

However, it was also subject to exploitation, which is why the server-side behaviour for it was changed by the Lab some time ago such that the function will only work if you have rezzing rights at 0,0,0 in a region. If you do not, any attempt to use Restore to Last Position will fail with a notification that you don’t have the required rezzing permissions. The viewer-side code for the capability was also removed from the SL viewer, although TPVs have retained it.

A further issue with the capability has been with No Copy objects. If Restore to Last Position is used on these when the user doesn’t have rezzing rights at 0.0.0 in a region, they not only fail to rez – they also vanish from inventory, requiring a relog in order to get them listed again.

However, BUG-5955 “Restore to Last Position (used only by TPVs) causes content loss” highlights a problem where at least one type of No Copy object can be permanently lost from inventory if Restore to Last Position is used even in a region where the user has rezzing permissions at 0,0,0. Not even a subsequent re-log sees the item reappear in inventory.

Given the unpredictable nature of Restore to Last Position, the Lab is considering removing or blocking all support for it viewer-side until such time as a fix for issues can be found / it can be made to work more predictably in all cases.

As an alternative, and given the function’s popularity, it has been suggested a restriction preventing its use on No Copy objects should be implemented. The Lab may be taking this under consideration. This is the option Firestorm have indicated that they intend to implement with their upcoming release (which may as a result be delayed until the code is implemented and tested).

SL projects updates 19/1: SL viewer, group chat and miscellaneous things

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments

There are no scheduled simulator deployments this week to either the Main or RC channels, and so no associated rolling restarted expected.

SL Viewer

The Interest List RC finally made it to the de facto release viewer with its promotion on Tuesday May 5th (version 3.7.7.289461). This leaves just three RC viewer in the release channel at present: SL Share 2 project viewer version 3.7.7.289497; Sunshine / AIS v3 RC  version 3.7.7.289441; and the Maintenance RC viewer version 3.7.7.289405. Please refer to my Current Viewer Release page for up-to-date information on all viewer releases.

 Group Chat

Simon Linden’s optimisation work for group chat was deployed across all of the back-end chat servers on Monday May 5th. while these should see some improvements in group chat (particularly in sending / receiving chat and moving between regions), Simon does warn that these optimisations are not expected to “fix” all of group chat. However, he will continue to work on further improvements as well.

Other Items

New Starter Avatars

Ebbe Altberg used one of the upcoming new starter avatars at the VWBPE conference in April (image: Strawberry Singh)
Ebbe Altberg used one of the upcoming new starter avatars at the VWBPE conference in April (image: Strawberry Singh)

During his appearance at the VWBPE conference in mid-April, Ebbe Altberg appeared using one of the new starter avatars. At the time he did, it was hinted that the new avatars would be appearing relatively imminently. However, almost a month on and they have yet to officially appear, although there is some speculation they’ll do so in May.

these new avatars are said to take advantage of some of the latest features in SL, which is being taken to mean that some / all are full or partial mesh. This has in turn raised questions as to whether it is wise giving new starters full mesh avatars, given they may not work with freebie items often offered to or picked-up by new starters.

LSL Functions for Materials

While there is no confirmation any work is being carried out on this (except, as Simon quipped, “perhaps in a parallel universe or something”), the Lab is still sounding out how and where such calls would likely be used, and the frequency with which such calls would be made.

The option of having scripted control of materials has been debated often, and still remains a desired item among builders and scripters. However, some of the concerns still remain – notably, have such capabilities might end up causing performance issues, deliberately or otherwise. Much has already been written on how rapid map flipping on multiple objects could deliberately impact performance and potentially result in viewer crashes, plus there are already animated mesh elements available which can also have a significant impact on viewer performance (some types of animated mesh tail can reportedly overload a viewer on a 32-bit system with out-of-memory errors in a matter of seconds), so there are also concerns that were this to be combined with the ability to change textures via script, they could (even unintentionally) have further dramatic impacts on performance.

One way around this would be to throttle the rate at which material maps can be changed via scripted command. What is interesting for the moment is that the Lab appears to have not completely closed the door on scripted control of materials, but is considering options and informally seeking feedback on potential use cases.

 

SL projects updates 18/2: group chat; group bans

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 18- Recap

  • On Tuesday April 29th, the Main channel received the server maintenance project that was on the Magnum RC in week 17, comprising a fix for BUG-5533 and a crash mode fix.
  • On Wednesday April 30th, the Magnum RC had the server-side Sunshine  / AIS v3 code re-enabled (this code requires the use of the Sunshine RC viewer), and all three RCs were updated with the bug fixes deployed to the Main channel.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the RC viewers in the release channel during week 18  and no further releases, either RC or project viewers, so the SL viewer releases remain as per the last update to my Current Viewer Releases page.

Group Chat Optimisation

Simon Linden dancing at a Server Beta User Group meeting
Simon Linden dancing at a Server Beta User Group meeting

The code Simon Linden has been working on to improve group chat was deployed to a single group chat server, where it has been running for all groups starting with group_id “b”. Commenting on the work at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May 1st, Maestro Linden said:

Simon’s been looking at the performance of that group chat server, and it seems to be running fine. So there are plans to update the rest of the group chat servers to the new version early next week. We won’t go so far as to say that group chat has been totally fixed, though – Simon has identified some other changes which could improve performance further.

A recent fix was made to IM sessions to correct the issue where it is possible to see “typing…” in an IM window when the other person isn’t actually typing (see STORM-1975), and questions were raised on whether this fix might be adding a load to group chat sessions, as the viewer-side code appeared to send the message during group chat sessions as well as person-to-person IMs. However, both Simon and Maestro Linden indicated that the notifications are simply ignored by the chat servers during a group chat session, so no additional load is created, although Maestro admitted it would be nice if the viewer didn’t send meaningless messages.

Aside from the back-end load, the biggest issue which occurs in group chat is when someone using it changes regions. When this happens, the chat service has to figure out where you are.

“The region you are on, your viewer and the back-end database all know where you are, and keep updated very fast. The chat servers, however, aren’t kept in perfect sync because that would be very hard to do with 50000+ people moving around who are all in 42 groups,” Simon said, in explaining the problem. He added, “It [the chat service] doesn’t track missing messages … but if it can’t send one to your agent, it then has to ask where you really are and then it sends there,” all of which takes time, delaying the receipt of group chat messages.

In describing the changes made, Simon concluded:

The new code we have out now is a bit more efficient, but more importantly it has more metrics and it showed me that the performance problems are in a few other areas … it turns out the updates to keep the list of people in the group chat updated are really significant. It gets worse, of course, in large groups – more people coming and going, and more people who need the updates.

Group Ban Lists

It appears a server-side deployment of the code require to manage the new group ban list functionality is drawing close. There is still work to be done viewer-side, but recent testing on Aditi resulted in a number of JIRAs being filed, and the associated server bugs have been stomped on by Baker Linden, with help from the likes of Caleb Linden.

SL projects updates 18/1: miscellaneous items

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Week 18

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates and news.

Main (SLS) Channel

On Tuesday April 29th, the Main channel received the server maintenance project that was on the Magnum RC in week 17, comprising:

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday April 30th, all three RCs should receive the same maintenance package. This comprises the same fixes as deployed to the Main channel and sees the Magnum RC rejoin BlueSteel and LeTigre with AIS v3 support, which requires the use of the Sunshine RC viewer.

SL Viewer

As per my recent post, the Lab have updated their SL system requirements page for Windows and Mac OSX to better reflect the public status of both operating systems.  There is an official blog post on the subject as well, which essentially confirms that Windows XP and OSX 10.6 are considered as no longer supported. While accessing SL from computers using these OS versions will not be blocked, users will no longer be able to obtain SL-related support should they encounter issues, and the Lab is advising people update wherever possible.

Additionally, the Lab is updating the Windows installer so that it will verify whether the latest service packs for Windows XP versions have been installed, otherwise viewer installation on XP will be blocked until such time as the relevant service packs have been installed.

The aim here is to help people enjoy improved stability in the SL experience. However, once these new requirements come into effect, they may cause some upset among those affected. How widespread this is liable to be is debatable; the Firestorm team have been running a similar process since the release of Firestorm 4.6.1, and they are reporting minimal complaints from among users.

Group Chat Optimisation

Following the last group chat tests on Aditi, Simon Linden reports that the optimised code has been deployed to a production server this week, but it is liable to be a little while longer before it is deployed to all of the chat servers, and time will be taken to see how it behaves with traffic on the server on which it is currently running.

Group Bans

Baker Linden is back on code merges for the viewer. It is thought he may have hit one or two problems, so assuming he makes the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May 1st, we may find out if this is the case and what is happening.

Experience Keys (/Permissions)

Expectations on what these are liable to be, how they will work, what limitations may be placed on them, and so on, is still running high, particularly after Danger Linden (Don Laabs, Linden Lab’s Senior Director of Product) mentioned them recently. As I’ve covered previously, the experience keys are essentially the culmination of a project which was initially prototyped with the Linden Realms game, and which have since been going through continued development, re-definition and enhancement and which should – hopefully – be appearing in the near future.

Other Items

URL Errors When Connecting to a Region

There is a known issue which can cause issues when the viewer is trying to connect to a region. In these circumstances, the viewer receives URLs containing the host name, but not the required “.agni.lindenlab.com” (e.g. to something like “https://sim10586:12043/cap/…” is received, rather than “https://sim10586.agni.lindenlab.com:12043/cap/…”).

This causes the viewer to fail to connect to the various capabilities using the URL calls, which in turn results in things like mesh load failures, inventory load failures,  L$ failures, and so on, as well as having bad URLs shown for http-in. See also BUG-4704.

Should this happen, the advice to region owners is to contact support, indicating the region where the issues are occurring. The problem can be identified in the viewer log file, which will contain entries similar to the following:

2014-04-29T16:44:05Z INFO: LLCurl::completedRaw: Failed to deserialize LLSD. https://sim10586:12043/cap/01a64236-9a2b-4008-bef0-46a0f7afecae [499]: STATUS_ERROR
2014-04-29T16:44:05Z WARNING: BaseCapabilitiesComplete::errorWithContent: [status:499:] {'reason':'STATUS_ERROR'}
2014-04-29T16:44:05Z INFO: failedSeedCapability: posting to seed https://sim10586:12043/cap/01a64236-9a2b-4008-bef0-46a0f7afecae (retry 23)
2014-04-29T16:44:05Z WARNING: LLURLRequest::smileytongue:rocess_impl: URLRequest Error: 6, Couldn't resolve host name, https://sim10586:12043/cap/01a64236-9a2b-4008-bef0-46a0f7afecae

 

SL projects updates 17/3: TPV developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

A TPV developer meeting took place on Friday April 25th. The core items discussed in the meeting are reported below, with timestamps in the relevant paragraphs indicating the point at they are discussed in the video embedded here. My thanks as always to North for the latter.

Release Candidate Status

Interest List, Sunshine and Maintenance RC Viewers

[01:02] All of these RC viewers have been rebuilt during the week to use the current release viewer code base (version 3.7.6.289164, formerly the VoiceMO RC), and all look to be performing reasonably well. However, none have been in the release channel for long enough for significant stats to be gathered.

SL Share 2

[01:26] The SL Share 2 viewer was issued as a release candidate viewer on Friday April 25th, version 3.7.7.289497 (download and release notes). This viewer provides options to upload Tweets and snapshots to Twitter and / or snapshots to Flickr, and includes optional post-process filter capabilities which can be applied to snaps being uploaded to Flickr, Twitter and / or Facebook. See my review of the project viewer for further details.

Snowstorm Viewer

[02:30] The next Snowstorm viewer, featuring third-party code contributions from the open-source community (including Ima Mechanic’s BUG-1831 LSL syntax highlighting work, developed with the help of Cinder Roxley and Oz Linden), is now with LL’s QA team, and it is hoped this will be appearing as a project viewer in week 18 (week commencing Monday April 28th), assuming no issues are uncovered during the QA process.

Oculus Rift Viewer

[04:05] Other than bug fixes, the  current Oculus Rift closed beta viewer is not expected to go through any significant updates for the time being. However, it is anticipated that there will be further work on the viewer once the Lab has access to the new Rift SDK, and that this may well be “very significant”.

Zipper Project Viewer

[04:30] It is anticipated that the faster installation “zipper” viewer (currently version 3.7.5.288507 – download and release notes – dated March 28th) will become a release candidate viewer “very soon”.

Mac / Cocoa Update

[06:48] There is still no single project at the Lab which is focused on Mac Cocoa issues. However, fixes are being developed and are starting to appear as a part of overall viewer development and release process.

The current release viewer (version 3.7.6.289164), includes a Vivox update to the 4.6.x libraries, and so should resolve Mavericks-related voice issues (among other voice issues). Also, the Maintenance RC (version 3.7.7.289405) has a number of Mac / Cocoa fixes, including: MAINT-3135 “Cocoa Viewer: Mac Maximizing the viewer leaves garbage on the screen”; MAINT-3288 “MAC – Fullscreen mode issue in Viewer 3.6.7 (281793)”; MAINT-3506:  “Copy & Paste on mac viewer often generate undesired special characters at the end of the pasted line sometimes leading to crash “; and MAINT-3642 “Mac viewer can no longer export textures to TGA format”. However, as there is no over-arching project for Mac / Cocoa fixes, it is a case of checking the release notes for new RC and project viewers as they appear.

The infamous ALT-camera Cocoa bug (see FIRE-12241 (MAINT-3171) is an issue the lab has been looking at but have so far been unable to work out  why it is happening. Oz Linden invited TPV developers to consider poking at it and contributing code if they felt it is something they might be able to resolve.

Webkit Update

[12:01] Webkit is a third-party library used within the viewer for a number of tasks. For example,  it powers the built-in web browser, and is used to display profiles (unless you’re using a viewer supporting legacy profiles). It is also used with Media on a Prim (MOAP) and many in-world televisions.

There have been an increasing number of issues with webkit. The libraries used within SL are out-of-date, for example, something which has caused the Lab and TPVs a considerable amount of pain (see BUG-4763 and FIRE-12642, and FIRE-11057). Given these problems, Monty Linden has been focusing on trying to improve matters, notably by creating a new lqtwebkit library repo, which he describes as “extremely experimental”.

Firestorm have re-worked webkit for themselves, updating to version 5..2.1 for Windows, which seems to be resolving issues. They’re working to do the same with Linux and Mac, although there is a problem with the latter where buttons embedded in a Flash video will not work.

As reported last time, a further problem here is that the qtwebkit (on which lqtwebkit is based) has been deprecated by QT, so the Lab is faced with a decision as to what to do going forward. One option may be to go with CEF, but which direction the Lab will take has yet to be decided.

SL projects updates 17/2: Group chat, group bans

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments week 17 – recap

There was only on server deployment in week 17, and that was to the Magnum RC. It comprised the same server maintenance package as deployed to it in week 16, but with an additional fix for BUG-5763 (“AGENT_MOUSELOOK flag is often incorrect when llGetAgentInfo() is called within control() event”). There have been no reports of further issues, so it is anticipated that this package will be deployed to the other channels in week 18 (week commencing Monday April 28th).

SL Viewer

Updates

On Thursday April 24th, the Sunshine / AIS v3 RC viewer updated to version 3.7.7.289441, (download and release notes), while the SL Share 2 project viewer updated to version 3.7.7.289468 (download and release notes).

LSL Support for Materials

This has been an oft-requested feature, and has been under informal review within the Lab. However, some confusion was caused when the release notes for the SL release viewer version 3.7.6.289164 (promoted on Monday April 21st, and formerly the VoiceMO RC), apparently listed MAINT-3531 (“Feature Request: LSL support for material texture maps”) as resolved.

However, this is an error. So far, there has still been no actual work on the capability.

Group Chat Optimisation

There was a further test of Simon Linden’s ongoing group chat optimisation work at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday April 24th. This followed the usual pattern of multiple messages being sent by those at the meeting across two chat groups, with people sending message from different regions as well as Morris, where the Server Beta meeting is held. From my own perspective, I had no noticeable issue in switching between local chat and one of the group chat sessions, even with a lot of messages passing through the latter, and didn’t appear to result in any message loss or significant delay.

However, the second group did cause the viewer to lock-up for up to 20-30 seconds at a time when switching to it, and appeared to be linked to the fact that one test participant was repeatedly pasted a veritable wall of text in to the group chat (which, while pushing the viewer, was probably not representative of how most people engage in group chat sessions). Both Simon and Maestro Linden believe the extended pauses were viewer-side, rather than anything in the back-end chat servers, with Maestro observing, “My guess is that the typesetting of all that text, profile icons, etc., is taking a lot of time.”

There’s still no news on when testing with larger groups will commence on Agni, although Simon hopes this will be “soon”.

Group Bans

Baker Linden, ironing-out the remaining issues with Group Bans
Baker Linden, ironing-out the remaining issues with Group Bans

Baker Linden has been working on the group ban functionality – notably the viewer-side code, although there have been some server-side updates as well. He had a new test viewer available for people to poke at during the Server Beta meeting, and which includes the latest updates found in the release viewer, as well a various fixes.

One of the latter is a fix for the issue whereby only the first name on a list of people being invited into a group would be checked to see if that person had been previously banned (and thus prevented from joining); anyone else further down the list would had been previously banned would be allowed to re-join on receiving the invitation.

Baker also noted a message has been added as well for these situations, “so you should get a notice saying some people in your invite list are banned from the group and weren’t sent an invite,” he said prior to testing. “I’ve noticed this to be a pretty sporadic thing, but I don’t think it’s something I can easily fix — the code showed that it was sending every time.”

While no formal testing was carried on with the latest updates to the viewer, it was noted that there appears to be an issue with the people picker option, in that it failed to locate people for banning – even when they were standing alongside the person with group ban powers. This will doubtless be looked into further.

Those wishing to test the group ban functionality can do so by downloading the test viewer and running it on Morris on Aditi.