Category: Simulator User Group

Simulator Deployments

At the time of writing. the server deployment thread appears at odds with reality:

• The thread refers to the SLS Main channel being on simulator release 533895. However:
  • Following restarts, it appears that simulators on the Main channel (and some on RC channels) have remained on 2019-12-04T20:29:26.533447, which according to previous deployment threads, was the last formal deployment to the Main channel.
  • According to the release note page, 533895 was deployed on December 19th, but has channel names are now obfuscated, it is not clear which RC received the update.
• The thread refer to restarts on the RC channels on Wednesday, January 8th, some RC servers should be restarted, but again without any deployment – although the 533895 version number is given for some when it should perhaps be 53447.

Simulator Issues

Restart Issues

The Tuesday, January 7th restarts were repeated a number of times, for reasons Simon Linden explained:

So we haven’t had any server updates since mid-December. Today we restarted a bunch because that can help performance, and in the middle of that we uncovered a bug that’s been lurking there for months, so it got a bit exciting.

Mazidox Linden added that – as of the time of writing this update – further restarts could not be ruled out.

The bug itself was related to at least one directory required by the Mono compiler not being created correctly, preventing scripts from being saved. It is apparently a bug that has been around for some time, but only surfaced as a result of changes to the way simulator restarts are run. Ironically, the changes were intended to make simulator restarts faster and smoother

Holiday Issues

Numerous region holders reported significant performance issues over the holiday period. According to Grumpity Linden, part of the issue was a failure with an automated tool, itself something of a workaround for dealing with simulator performance issues:

It’s possible there is more than one issue causing problems, and investigations are still in progress, including the distribution of poorly-performing regions (e.g. are they on their own on the grid, do they have neighbours) as well as looking at distribution by server.

SL Viewer

There have been no viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:

• Current Release version 6.3.5.533275, formerly the Wassail RC viewer, dated December 4th, promoted December 12th – No change.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Xanté Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.6.533748, December 19th.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.5.533347, December 5th.
  • EEP RC viewer, version 6.4.0.532771, November 20th.
• Project viewers:
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd.
  • 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.

Destination Guide

Not strictly part of the engineering team’s remit, but it has been reported the Destination Guide is giving errors when trying to submit new destinations. This has been seen by the Web Team, and is apparently being looked at.

No major news again this week; the meeting was given over to live music and way too much gesturbating to follow conversations.

Simulator Deployments

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

• There was no deployment on Tuesday, December 17th, leaving the SLS Main channel and a portion of the RC channel servers on simulator version 2019-12-04T20:29:26.533447, originally deployed on Thursday, December 5th, and comprising:
  • A build of release 2019-11-15T21:13:13.532828 using new build technology.
  • Addresses some cases of scripts erroneously stopping.
  • Fixes a crash.
• On Wednesday, December 18th, some RC servers should be updated with server release 2019-12-06T21:03:45.533558, comprising internal fixes. This is a re-deployment of the release originally made on December 9th, 2019, containing “a difference under the hood”.

No Change Window

These deployments are the last scheduled for 2020. Due to the end of year No Change Window (December 20th through to January 2nd, 2020, the next simulator updates will not likely be deployed before Tuesday, January 7th, 2020.

SL Viewer

There have been no viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:

• Current Release version 6.3.5.533275, formerly the Wassail RC viewer, dated December 4th, promoted December 1th2 – 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 6.3.5.533347, December 5th.
  • EEP RC viewer, version 6.4.0.532771, November 20th.
• Project viewers:
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd.
  • 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.

 

No major news again this week.

Simulator Deployments

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

• On Tuesday, December 10th, the SLS Main channel was updated to simulator version 2019-12-04T20:29:26.533447, originally deployed on Thursday, December 5th, and comprising:
  • A build of release 2019-11-15T21:13:13.532828 using new build technology.
  • Addresses some cases of scripts erroneously stopping.
  • Fixes a crash.
• On Wednesday, December 11th, there should be an RC deployment to the BlueSteel RC. Simulator version 2019-12-06T21:03:45.533558 comprises internal fixes.

Deployment Notes

• The Tuesday deployment started a little later than usual.
• Further, as some of the processes managing deployments are being modified to increase stability, some deployments may run longer than usual. Once this work has finished, it is hoped deployments will be faster and more stable.

SL Viewer

At the end of week #49, the following viewers were updated:

• On December 4th, the Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.3.5.533275.
• On December 5th, the Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 6.3.5.533347.

On Monday, December 9th the Copy / Paste project viewer updated to version 6.3.5.533365. The rest of the official viewer pipelines are as follows:

• Current Release version 6.3.4.532299, formerly the Ordered Shutdown RC viewer, dated November 4th, – No change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • EEP RC viewer, version 6.4.0.532771, November 20th.
• Project viewers:
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd.
  • 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.

 

Update, December 5th: a deployment was made to the grid. Server update version 2019-12-04T20:29:26.533447 comprises:

• A build of release 2019-11-15T21:13:13.532828 using new build technology.
• Addresses some cases of scripts erroneously stopping.
• Fixes a crash.

Hopefully, this addresses the recent issues with scripts failing until a region is restarted (see BUG-227864).

Simulator Deployments

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

• On Tuesday, 3rd December, the planned Main SLS channel deployment was cancelled. Had it been deployed, it would have comprised server maintenance release 2019-11-19T22:26:38.532992, built with the updated server build tools, and which includes:
  • Improved crash detection during shut-down.
  • Fixes for some race conditions with LSL scripts that could cause them to handle the same event more than once during a roll.
  • Updates to improve simulator security.
• The planned RC deployment for Wednesday, December 4th, comprising server update has also been cancelled.

The reasons for the cancellation are related to the return of recent issues with scripts failing until a region is restarted (see BUG-227864) and which has been an intermittent issue recently, with Simon Linden noting:

We originally had planned to update the main channel regions with the version that’s on the RC channels, but held off as we are looking into issues about scripts not running. It appears to be an old issue that’s always been there but is worth investigating … we’re trying to get an update together for tomorrow morning [Wednesday, December 4th]. It was a very small percentage [of scripts affected] but that’s enough to be painful when there are millions running.

– Simon Linden

So again, keep an eye on the server deployment thread / technology → second life server sub-forum for updates.

Simulator Performance Issues

There is a forum thread concerning simulator overload issues that occurred over the Thanksgiving weekend (see: Huge intermittent sim overload). These issues were further confirmed at the SUG meeting by others seeing similar problems on other regions. Linden Lab do not currently have an explanation for the problems, but Maxidox Linden, one of the Second Life QA team members, did take a moment to address claims in the thread that LL “not caring” about issues like this:

I’m going to let the devs here handle this topic but I just want to chime in that I’ve read that thread and we absolutely do care about issues like this, and don’t put our development time solely into new feature work (I’m the one who tests a bunch of the stability and performance change.

– Mazidox Linden

The discussion on this topic raised questions on the simulator statistic Simulation Time and what it actually records, given it is often tied to simulator issues – as is the case with this issue. Exactly what it records has been a subject of discussion for around the last decade, and came up again in terms of whether it might point to a possible cause. After taking a look, Simon Linden noted:

So I did some digging. “Simulation Time” seems to be a catch-all category that includes odds and ends like dealing with terrain layers, some physics synchronization, parcel info. So not a lot to use tracking this issue down.

SL Viewer

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week.

Simulator Deployments

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

• On Tuesday, 26th November, servers on the Main SLS channel were updated with server maintenance release 2019-11-15T21:13:13.532828, previously deployed to a release candidate channel. It comprises:
  • Improves crash detection during shut-down.
  • Fixes some race conditions with LSL scripts that could cause them to handle the same event more than once during a roll.
  • Includes updates to improve simulator security.
• On Wednesday, 27th November, there should be a single RC deployment 2019-11-19T22:26:38.532992, which is functionally the same build as 532828, but compiled using updated server build tools.
  • Given the issues with Tuesday deployment (see below) the status of the deployment was in a state of flux at the time of writing.

Tuesday Deployment Issues

The Tuesday server updates required an extended deployment window, together with more restarts of the updated simulators than is usually the case. Given the simulator version had been deployed to RC servers in week #47, the issues encountered with the deployment took LL by surprise:

This is one of those situations where we are left trying to figure out what went so wrong; we don’t know of changes that would have caused this much churn. That is the big difference between our Tuesday and Wednesday updates. Tuesday is more than 2x bigger, and divided up differently. Seeing something happen and knowing why it happened are two completely different things. Given that last week was OK, I suspect it is a scaling problem however.

The real frustration is that there isn’t a good way to test or simulate the scale where the issues happen. Updating one or two servers can be perfectly fine; but then do a few hundred and something goes up in smoke.

– Simon Linden, commenting on the November 26th deployment issues

Currently, the Lab is digging into what may have gone wrong (e.g. by checking server logs, etc.). They have already tracked down what might be a contributing factor, but the overall root cause analysis will take time. However, as the issues appears to be with the deployment process itself rather than the updated simulator code, at this point in time it is unlikely the simulator update will be rolled back.

SL Viewer

The following viewers were updated during the latter half of week #47:

• November 22nd:
  • The Wassail Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.3.5.533043.
  • The Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999.
• November 20th
  • The EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.532771.
  • The Copy / Paste project version updated to version 6.3.5.532860.

The remainder of the viewers in the current pipelines are as follow:

• Current Release version 6.3.4.532299, formerly the Ordered Shutdown RC viewer, dated November 4th, – No Change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.5.532739, November 15th.
  • EEP RC viewer, version 6.4.0.532314, November 1st.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.4.532273, October 31st.
• Project viewers:
  • 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.

Name Changes

• There are concerns over how long names might be cached within services, how changes might be tracked by external databases (e.g. customer lists for things like redelivery terminals), etc.
  • To help ensure user-developed tools, etc., can keep up with Name Changes, Linden Lab plan to offer a REST API (REpresentational State Transfer) that can be used to perform a name<-> avatar key translations and that will always return the same key for any name an account has ever had, and the key will always return the current name.
  • Creators are again reminded that their products and tools should utilised the avatar agent key, no avatar names.
• LSL enquiries on agent key will return the current name for an avatar, not any past name(s).
• There was concern that Name Changes could lead to issues in tracking griefers. However, as was pointed out in the meeting:
  • There are fees associated with Names Changes – signing-up to Premium and then for each change. These are unlikely to find appeal with griefers.
  • Griefers already create multiple accounts, and this will remain likely remain their preferred means of causing upset.
• BUG-216397 “llName2Key, llRequestUserKey both accept a lone “R” as a surname for “Resident” agents” has been raised with the Lab again, and has been marked for inclusion in the next internal maintenance fix for Name Changes.
• Once again, a “fee” figure was mentioned at the Simulator User Group meeting (US $20) – but it is important to note this is only a guess on the part of a user, and not any form of statement from Linden Lab. So If you hear it anywhere in the next month or so, ignore it.

Updates, November 20th, 2019:

• Regarding BUG-227179 “All off-line inventory offers from scripted objects are STILL lost”. As per the notes below, this was believed fixed in the Wassail RC viewer. Testing has confirmed the issue hasn’t been fixed, and can be more confusing  – see BUG-227901.
• Following the discussion about the error message, “Wire Chewed By Rabbit”, April Linden offered the following explanation via the forums:

/me raises her paw!

Soooo, uh, I was working on some server code a few years ago, and figured “no one’s gonna see this anyhow, so I’m gonna have some fun with it!” hehehe. 😝

You never know where the GridBuns might be lurking…!

Although she admits why the error surfaced with regards to Singularity is a bit of a mystery.

Simulator Deployments

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

• There was no update to the Main SLS channel on Tuesday, November 19th, leaving it on server release 2019-11-01T18:02:37.532376, previously deployed to an RC and comprising: internal script improvements. internal logging changes and improvements to simulator state saves, which should make rolls smoother.
• On Wednesday, November 20th, there will be a maintenance update to RC servers: 2019-11-15T21:13:13.532828, comprising:
  • Improves crash detection during shut-down
  • Fixes some race conditions with LSL scripts that could cause them to handle the same event more than once during a roll.
  • Includes updates to improve simulator security.

An SLS deployment had been planned for the Main channel, however, at the meeting, Simon Linden noted:

We didn’t have an update this morning as we found an issue preventing the RC code from going forward. It isn’t anything visible or buggy from your point of view, but was about some internal data routing. To be on the safe side, we decided to get that sorted out first.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the current SL viewer pipelines, leaving them as follows:

• Current Release version 6.3.4.532299, formerly the Ordered Shutdown RC viewer, dated November 4, – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.5.532739, November 15.
  • EEP RC viewer, version 6.4.0.532314, November 1.
  • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.3.4.532273, October 31.
• Project viewers:
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.532780, November 15.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.531949, October 28.
  • 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.

In Brief

• Simulator Deployments Causing Script Issues? -There have been reports that recent simulator deployments are causing running scripts to be reset when regions come back up, rather than  being restored to their previous state. Potential issues linked to this – impacting breedables – are indicated as being BUG-227688 and BUG-227897. As far as the  Lab is aware, there have been no back-end changes that would cause such script issues.
• BUG-227179 “All off-line inventory offers from scripted objects are STILL lost” – it is believed that a fix for this is in the Wassail release candidate viewer (if not recorded in the release notes) – tests are being made to verify whether this is the case or not.
• Error message: “Wire Chewed By Rabbit” in log files following log-in with missing textures / time-outs – this appears to be an issue specific to the Singularity viewer, and believed fixed in the most recent nightly / alpha / beta builds. If you are on Singularity and encounter it when examining your viewer log files as a result of texture load issues, please file a report with the Singularity team.