Tag: Server Updates

SL projects updates week 15/1: server, viewer, group bans, misc items

Posted on by Inara Pey
Simulator UG meeting, Tuesday April 8th, 2014
Simulator UG meeting, Tuesday April 8th, 2014

SL Server Deployments

Week 15

It’s pretty simple again this week: there are no server deployments scheduled for either the Main (SLS) channel (which remains on maintenance project 14.03.12.288004) or the RCs (which collectively remain on 14.03.28.288552). As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest news and updates / issues.

SL Viewer

The de facto release viewer updated on Monday April 7th, with the promotion of the Google Breakpad RC, version 3.7.5.288464 (release notes).

As a result of this promotion, the StatTest viewer (formerly version 3.7.5.288371), which was never intended for promotion as a release viewer but issued as a means of assisting with bug-fixing the Google Breakpad code, has been removed from the viewer release channel.

Group Ban Lists

“I’ll be working with Maestro this week to try to get the group ban services and back-end stuff grid-wide on Aditi,” Baker Linden informed the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday April 8th. He went on: “I have a handful of smallish bugs to finish up, and then I’ll look at my options for development viewers and such, so group ban will be grid-wise soon [on Aditi] (I hope, depending on the amount of releases in the pipe). And then after we see there’s no big issues, we’ll get that pushed out to Agni.”

Other Items

Aditi Log-in Issue / Inventory Update Issue

As reported in part 2 of the my week 14 updates, there has been an issue in getting passwords and inventory to correctly sync on the Aditi beta grid following a password change. Normally, a script is run on  daily basis during periods of relatively low SL use (around midnight-02:00 SLT) which should synchronise a user’s password and inventory between Agni and Aditi. However, several people had noted that their Aditi passwords  / inventories were not updating despite several days passing after making  password change (see BUG-5563).

It had been thought this issue had been dealt with in week 14; however, a forum thread notes it is still causing problems for some people.

Transaction History Oopsie

There was a brief issue with Transaction History pages on Tuesday April 8th which caused some consternation when it happened, although it was quickly rectified.

The problem first came to light when merchants noticed that their Transaction History page was no longer showing totals or options to download the history in anything other than .CSV format (the previous options had been .XML or .XLS). Further issues were noticed as time went on, as noted in a Commerce forum thread and also in a JIRA (BUG-5664).

The root cause of the problem appears to have been the URL for the familiar Transaction History page being swapped for a new page. The concerns this raised were sufficient for the URL to be reverted back to the original a little over an hour after the problem was first noticed, allowing people to once more access the familiar Transaction history page. Whether the change of URL is indicative of an upcoming change that is in preparation, or simply a mistake on the part of someone at the Lab, is unclear.

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SL projects updates week 14/1: server, viewer updates

Posted on by Inara Pey

SL Server Deployments

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

Main (SLS) Channel

On Tuesday April 1st, the Main channel received the server maintenance package deployed to the Magnum RC in week 13. This package comprises:

  • Crash mode fix.
  • Fixed a rare case in which certain users were unable to log in (BUG-5130)
  • Fix for a case in which multiple scripts in the same prim calling llTakeControls() with heterogeneous ‘accept’ and ‘pass_on’ parameters would not receive a control() event correctly in some cases (BUG-5281)
  • Updated LSL syntax file to use a new schema (fixes STORM-2000) related to a viewer in testing and apart of STORM-1831.

As the roll-out progressed, there were reports on the forum thread that some regions are having a double restart. After investigating the issue, Caleb Linden reported: “I got the word from engineering that the double rolls were manually triggered by accident but they shouldn’t compromise the sims’ performances once up. This only affected a small group of regions.”

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday April 2nd, all three RCs should receive the same maintenance update, which incorporates the bug fixes deployed to the Main channel and which also sees AIS v3 support returned on the Magnum RC, after it was disabled / removed in the week 13 deployment. There seems to be yet more confusion over that actual status of AIS v3 server-side. and whether this means it will actually be enabled on all three RCs, or just re-deployed.

SL Viewer Updates

The SL Voice RC returned to the release channel on Monday March 21st, with the arrival of version 3.7.5.288516. This viewer pulls in Vivox 4.6.x libraries instead of 4.5 for improved voice stability and to address Mavericks issues (download and release notes).

the Sunshine / AIS v3 Rc should return to the channel later in the week if all goes according to plan.

SL Share 2 Project Viewer

As I’ve reported here, on Tuesday april 1st, Linden Lab released the SL Share 2 project viewer, version 3.7.5.288424. This includes:

  • An option to connect to Twitter and upload tweets  / snapshots from in-world to your Twitter account
  • An option to connect to Flickr and upload snapshots
  • An updated Facebook floater with revised snapshot upload tab incorporating the features found in the Flickr and Twitter snapshot uploads, and a new Friends tab.

An interesting element in this viewer is the use of filter effects which can be applied to snapshots, and which allow users to add their own filter options.

Group Chat and Group Bans

There’s little to report here, other than:

  • At the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday April 1st, Simon Linden said of the most recent group chat test, ” We had a good group chat test last week that gave me a few more things to fix. They weren’t new issues, but showed some more ways the current system can fail. So it was a good test.” It’s not clear whether this means the testing will now move to Agni and a selected group with a large number of users, or whether there will be further Aditi testing first.
  • With group bans, and as reported last time on the subject, Baker Linden is busy repairing the code that want broken / lost during a merge process and trying to make sure everything is back together and working properly,

 

SL projects updates week 13/1: server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

SL Server Deployments

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

There was again no server deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday March 25th. Of the three RC channels, there will be no change to either BlueSteel or LeTigre on Wednesday March 26th. However, the Magnum RC will be updated with a new server maintenance project, comprising:

  • Crash mode fix.
  • Fixed a rare case in which certain users were unable to log in (BUG-5130)
  • Fix for a case in which multiple scripts in the same prim calling llTakeControls() with heterogenous ‘accept’ and ‘pass_on’ parameters would not receive a control() event correctly in some cases (BUG-5281)
  • Updated LSL syntax file to use a new schema (fixes STORM-2000)

The LSL syntax file update for STORM-2000 is part of a large project being undertaken by Ima Mechanic with assistance from Oz Linden (see STORM-1831). This work is currently awaiting the release of viewer-side changes, which have been undergoing testing by LL’s QA.

A lightly-attended Simulator UG meeting, Tuesday March 25th
A lightly-attended Simulator UG meeting, Tuesday March 25th

SL Viewer Updates

On Monday March 24th, the FmodEx Hotfix viewer (3.7.4.288138, release notes here) was updated to the de facto release viewer. The core updates in this viewer comprise:

  • Crash fix (MAINT-3703)
  • Update FmodEx library to 4.44.31
  • Additional work for MAINT-2718 (Linux viewer was using logging version of library)

Group Chat Work

During the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday March 25th, I asked Simon Linden about the outcome of the group chat tests run on Thursday March 20th, now that there’s been time to check the logs files. He said, “It didn’t have any surprises, but that was a good result. That test was mostly checking out the new statistics it gathered, which worked fine too.” He also confirmed that testing with a large group (most likely the Firestorm support group) is the next step in proceedings:

It’s been delayed a bit due to some people being out of the office. I’m hoping to do something next week … I think that’s the earliest possible. In the mean time I’m working on another layer in the back-end system that is inefficient, so I’m hoping to finish that up today or tomorrow and roll it in together.

Other Items

Revision to the TPVD Directory

The Third-party Viewer Directory received a change to the section listing viewers that report crash statistics. Whereas previously, viewers in this section had been ranked from best to worst crash rate (% of sessions that end in a crash), as from March 25th, they are now ordered from best to worst disconnect rate (% of sessions that end without the simulator seeing a logout).

Regions Size Trivia

During a discussion on vehicle design and region crossings, Simon Linde made mention of the factor that he once spent time looking at region sizes in SL. This isn’t the first time he’s mentioned this work. The last time he raised it, he went to far as to indicate that were regions ever to be resized, increasing them to 1 km a side rather than 1024 metres a side would be preferable, although this would impact the power of 2 approach taken with building SL. At the Simulator UG meeting, he reiterated this latter point, saying, “unfortunately the 256×256 region space is carved into the SL design all over … from the database to the simuators to the viewer and the messages. Changing that would be huge.”

SL projects update week 11/2: group bans, JIRA, Oculus Rift

Posted on by Inara Pey
Server Beta meeting, Thursday March 13th
Server Beta meeting, Thursday March 13th

Server Deployments: week 11 – recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.

  • On Tuesday March 11th, the Main channel was updated with the server maintenance project deployed the BlueSteel and LeTigre channels  in week 10.
  • On Wednesday March 12th, BlueSteel and LeTigre joined Magnum in having support for a new version of the inventory service, AIS v3, enabled.  This service requires the use of the Project Sunshine RC viewer. The only changes compared to last week’s Magnum release was to include this week’s SLS changes.

Aditi Server Maintenance Package

A new server maintenance project arrived on Aditi in week 11, en route for a release on the main grid. This includes some bug fixes and some further work on the LSL syntax project  Ima Mechanic has been developing, and which is largely encapsulated in STORM-1831. The new project on Aditi specifically includes a new schema to fix STORM 2000, so expect this to be filtering through to the main grid in due course.

Group Ban Update

Not a lot to report here. Whirly Fizzle uncovered an awkward bug whereby a person granted the ability to ban others from a group could actually accidentally ban themselves. This proved a little hard for the Lab to initially pin down, prompting Maestro Linden to comment at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday March 13th, “We [he and Baker] both had problems earlier, because we were using a more manual method of just POSTing the data to the capability.” However, now the issue has been identified, a fix is being worked on.

JIRA Settings – Making Older BUG Reports Visible.

Following my note in part 1 of this report that users can opt to set their older BUG reports visible to the public, Maestro Linden said:

By the way, it’s possible to set the visibility of your past BUG issues by editing the ‘Security Level:’ setting. For the most part, we’re leaving that up to the reporters to change, if they’re willing to share their bug report issue more widely.

The reason we’re doing it that way is because people previously filed BUG reports with the expectation of only a few people being able to see it, and in some cases there are sensitive details like email addresses and conversations and whatnot.

On the matter of privacy, Maestro also indicated that new BUG reports can also be set for limited public viewing – that is, only to “Triagers and Reporter” should anyone have any concern over posting sensitive information in a new BUG report.

Oculus Rift

Not a lot to report here. The Lab has put out a call for beta testers for the Oculus Rift version of the viewer, as I reported here. commenting in broad terms about the project, Maestro Linden indicated that there is a slight drop in frame rate when using the headset, although he was uncertain as to the overall impact. He also described the revised UI as seen when in Riftlook as floating overhead, possibly in a toroidal form, and that the user needs to move their head to see it, so as not to have the UI invade the world view. He actually gave up trying to describe it, as he was without a headset when discussing it, and reported, “Marissa’s trying to explain it to me but it’s complicated :).”

Those fortunate enough to have a headset and who get into the beta programme will doubtless find out in due course!

SL projects updates week 11/1: server, viewer, group bans

Posted on by Inara Pey
Simulator User Group meeting (stock)
Simulator User Group meeting (stock)

Server Deployments: week 11

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.

Main (SLS) Channel

On Tuesday March 11th, the Main channel was updated with the server maintenance project deployed the BlueSteel and LeTigre channels  in week 10. This contains the following bug fixes:

  • Fixed a bug in which the server release notes link in “About Second Life” would sometimes fail to appear
  • Fixed a bug in which certain objects had incorrect status when crossing between regions
  • Fixed a crash mode.

A question in the forum thread following the week 10 deployments  about the nature of the fix for “bug in which certain objects had incorrect status when crossing between regions” was responded to by Maestro Linden, who explained the fix was limited to what appears to be a single-case issue.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday March 12th, BlueSteel and LeTigre should join Magnum in having support for a new version of the inventory service, AISv3, enabled.  This service requires the use of the Project Sunshine RC viewer.

SL Viewer Updates

On Monday March 10th, the Maintenance RC viewer was promoted to the de facto release viewer, version 3.7.3.287491 (download) – release notes are here.

A new hotfix release candidate appeared on Tuesday March 11th. The FmodEx Hotfix version 3.7.4.287875 (download and release notes) is intended to correct a suspected thread race crasher in the FmodEx audio streaming library.

Otherwise, all other viewers remain as listed in my Current Viewer Releases page.

Group Ban list

Baker Linden, ironing-out viewer-side issues with Group Bans
Baker Linden, ironing-out viewer-side issues with Group Bans

Baker Linden is working to fix issues which were picked-up on during some initial public testing of the Group Ban functionality on Aditi during the Server Beta User group meeting on Thursday March 6th. Those issues already identified with the viewer code can be found here.

Allowing for further testing and scheduling, the current plan is to have the server-side elements of the Group Ban functionality deployed across Agni prior to the viewer code being released in an RC viewer.

Until that happens, the viewer code will either remain as a direct download or may filter into a project viewer at some point once the server code is ready to start being deployed on Agni (there is currently no date as to when this will be).

Currently, the development viewer is available for Windows or Mac OSX or Linux, but the group ban functions will only work on the Aditi test regions such as in Morris (at the Server Beta UG meeting area).

JIRA: Old BUG issues Can be Made Visible

The re-opening of the JIRA occurred in week 10, and at the time, only BUG issues raised after the re-opening would be available to public scrutiny. However, it now appears as if reporters have the option of re-opening their old issues to public viewing if they so wish. Callak Skytower, for example, has made BUG-4427 publicly viewable once more.

Other Items

Group Role Updates

An issue with group roles was raised at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday March 11th. If a member of a group is assigned a new / additional role, the update occurs server-side, and is reflected in the Group floater for the owner / officer (or whoever is empowered to grant roles), but the change is not reflected in the Group floater of the person who has been granted the new / additional role until such it as they either re-log or are sent a re-invitation to join the group.

This has not been a cause of major concern, possibly because there is little in the way of role re-assignments occurring in groups on a daily basis. It is not currently clear as to whether the matter will be addressed, although there was general agreement that updates to role assignments should require something like a relog in order to be seen in the Group floater.

My thanks to mona Eberhardt and Rex Cronin for the meeting transcripts.

SL projects update 10/2: group ban preview

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments: week 10 – recap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread in the forums for the latest updates / changes.

  • On Tuesday March 4th, the Main channel was updated with the infrastructure update deployed the RC channels  in week 9.
    • On Wednesday March 5th, Magnum remained on the same server version as week 9, comprising the infrastructure update and enabled support for AIS v3.  BlueSteel and LeTigre were updated with a new server maintenance project which contains the following bug fixes:
      • Fixed a bug in which the server release notes link in “About Second Life” would sometimes fail to appear
      • Fixed a bug in which certain objects had incorrect status when crossing between regions
      • Fixed a crash mode

A question in the forum thread on the nature of the fix for “bug in which certain objects had incorrect status when crossing between regions” was responded to by Maestro Linden, who explained the fix was limited to what appears to be a single-case issue.

SL Viewer

The Sunshine project viewer moved to RC status on March 5th, with the release of version 3.7.3.287158 (download and release notes), and a new Voice viewer with Vivox updates entered the release channels as an RC viewer, version 3.7.3.287288 (download and release notes), both of which I previewed here.

The Maintenance RC viewer updated on March 6th to version 3.7.3.287491 (download and release notes). This view includes a range of LL-driven MAINT fixes, including crash fixes, updates to address CHUI-related issues, bug fixes and some localisation work – please refer to the release notes for details.

Group Bans

The Group Ban viewer is approaching a point where it will be appearing in a project viewer form, and it was put through its paces in a group test on Aditi (where some regions have the server-side support), during the Sever Beta meeting on Thursday March 6th.

I’ll be providing a complete overview of how this ability, which allows group own and those within the group assigned the group ban power, to eject and ban people – such as spammers – from a group. The capability is specifically aimed at groups with open enrolment, and those banned are unable to re-join it until such time as their ban has been lifted – although there is a maximum limit of 500 on the group ban list. Go beyond this, and attempts at further banning will fail until such time as one or more names are removed from the list.

I’ll be reviewing the capability in full once the viewer reaches a project viewer status, but in the meantime I’m including a couple of screen caps showing the some of the addition to the group floater which allow group bans to be managed but those empowered to do so.

Goup bans: the option to ban people from a group is available from the Members tab (l), and allws individual or multiple bans to be applied. Those banned are listed in Banned Agents tab (r), which include a button to unban names and a button to pre-actively add names to the ban list using the people picker
Group bans test viewer: the option to ban people from a group is available from the Members tab (l), and allows individual or multiple bans to be applied. Those banned are listed in Banned Agents tab (r), which include a button to unban names and a button to pre-actively add names to the ban list using the people picker

There’s still some work to be done on the viewer (there are some missing notifications, for example, and some issues were found in the when banning people, which need to be addressed). Also, the server-side code has yet to be deployed to the Main grid. So it may still be a little while before we see the group ban functionality progressing more towards more widespread use.

Other Items

Inventory Loss Issue

There are reports of some users experiencing inventory loss. It is said that around three JIRA reports have been filed on the matter, which started occurring on Magnum regions after the AIS v3 was enabled. However, whether or not the losses are linked to the code or not is unclear. The issues are being described as corrupt inventories, with all contents gone, and LL’s own inventory repair tools have failed to rectify matters. The situation is currently under investigation by the Lab, and it appears that the issue may be related to the use of “obscure” viewers.