Tag: Server Updates

SL Projects update week 41 (2): TPV developer meeting, group ban list, interest list

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments Summary – Week 41

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

  • There was no update to the Main channel
  • The three RCs remained on the same package as deployed in week 40, with one additional fix for objects using llGetCameraRot() as a result of an interest list related issue.

Potential Server Deployments  – Week 42

Speaking at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday October 11th, Maestro Linden indicated that allowing for QA testing and final decisions, it looks as if week 42 (commencing Monday October 14th) should see:

  • The Main channel receive the package currently deployed to the three RCs
  • At least one RC package which should contain fixes for the region crossing issues noted in my week 40 report, namely: vehicles being incorrectly autoreturned on crossing a region boundary under certain circumstances (and the collision body being left behind) and “ghost” avatars and vehicles sometimes appearing to an observer when the region crossing is at the limits of their draw distance.
In the guise of my "Crash Test Alt", I doogie with a top-hatted Simon Linden at the Server Beta meeting
In the guise of my “Crash Test Alt”, I boogie with a top-hatted Simon Linden at the Server Beta meeting

SL Viewer Updates

RC Updates

The Second Life Share (SLShare) RC viewer has been rebuilt using the current de facto viewer release code and a new version – 3.6.8.282036 – on October 9th. This should see all of the current RC builds now rebuilt using the release viewer code base.

Mac Viewer  / OS X 10.6

The Mac 3.6.4 viewer which was offered to Mac OS X 10.6 users as a result of issues with the recent Cocoa updates impacting them has been closed, as the Lab believes all the important bugs on this issue are fixed.  Those who had either been rolled back to this release, or opted to install it, have been updated to the current release.

Interest List Viewer

The interest list RC viewer has yet to appear, although the code is available for those able to access it for self-builds. Two issues have been identified by those compiling the viewer. The first of these appears to be a known bug, SH-4552, wherein objects and linksets previously cached by the viewer fail to load following a teleport, and will generally only render following a relog (right-clicking where the object should be, as with the “missing prims” issue earlier in the year, does not work). The second causes objects to vanish from the user’s field-of-view until after a relog  if draw distance is reduced and then returned to its prior settings.

Whether either of these issues is sufficient to stop the viewer emerging as either a project or RC viewer remains to be seen. The code had been sitting awaiting the button to be pushed to move it into one or the other. It had been hoped that members of the team who have been working on the viewer would be available to discuss the viewer during the TPV Developer meeting on Friday October 11th. Unfortunately, they didn’t manage to attend.

Upcoming Viewers

Other viewers on the horizon include:

  • A further maintenance release, which may include Baker Linden’s Group Ban List code
  • Monty Linden’s viewer-side HTTP updates, which have been “snarled up” as a result of some rebuild dependencies.

Continue reading “SL Projects update week 41 (2): TPV developer meeting, group ban list, interest list” →

SL project updates week 41 (1): Server, viewer, general updates

Posted on by Inara Pey

A quick summary for now, as I’m a little caught-up in RL bits.

Server Deployments – Week 41

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

Second Life Server (Main Channel)

There have been no updates to the Main channel.

Second Life RC BlueSteel, RC Magnum, and RC LeTigre – Wednesday October 9th

The RC channels should all receive on update, but otherwise remain on the package deployed in week 40.

The one addition to the package is the fix for the llGetCameraRot() LSL function, which I reported on here, and relates to a “lazy” update to scripted objects using this function as a result of recent interest list updates.

Release notes for the package are the same for all three RCs, BlueSteel is the one linked to.

If all goes according to plan, this RC deployment should be promoted to the Main channel in week 42, and new packages deployed to the RCs.

SL Viewer Updates

Following the promotion of the Maintenance RC viewer to the de facto release viewer, Monday October 7th saw the Snowstorm contributions RC updated to version 3.6.8.281997, based on the new release viewer code base, and the Google Breakpad RC viewer was similarly updated on Tuesday October 8th, to version 3.6.8.282050.

Interest List

Andrew Linden reports he is trying to get some regions up and running on Aditi to test scene loading. All things being equal, the viewer-side code which utilises the recent interest list updates deployed to Agni should make a debut appearance  (probably as an RC maintenance viewer) in week 41, however, Andrew also commented on the fact that odd little bugs keep showing-up on the server side which impact the viewer

Group Ban List

Baker reports that he’s working hard to get everything up and running on Aditi over the course of the next two weeks. Internal testing of his code should commence this week, and he warns he may miss his target as a result of personal commitments.

SL projects update week 40 (2): SSA, group ban list, upcoming bug fixes

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 40 Recap

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

  • There was no Main channel deployment in week 40
  • The three RC channels all received the same update, comprising a fix for a bug affecting group notice delivery to large groups whereby the notice randomly fails to reach some group members; a new JSON_DELETE option for llJsonSetValue(); interest list preparatory work for more correct sort order during scene load – release notes (BlueSteel).
Having fun at the Server Beta Meeting
Having fun at the Server Beta Meeting

Upcoming Bug Fixes

There are a number of upcoming server-side bug fixes due. It is hoped all of these will reach one or more RCs in week 41. However, this depends on them passing QA, etc. The fixes include:

llGetCameraRot() Issue

There has been a series of bug reports from across the grid being raised about problems with camera updates when operating in Mouselook with scripted objects using llGetCameraRot() (HUDS, weapons, etc), and which may also affect scripted objects using llGetCameraRot()  when in 3rd person view. Commenting on the issue at the Server Beta meeting, Maestro Linden had this to say:

There were a few bugs reported today [Thursday October 3rd] about llGetCameraRot() being ‘lazy’ about updates, which we’ve been able to confirm. If you’re aiming in mouselook and make subtle adjustments, the llGetCameraRot() rotation doesn’t change (but should) …

In any case, Andrew took a look at the bug and found the cause; one of the interest list changes affected how often the simulator updates the reported camera rotation value. He had added some hysteresis so that only large changes that would affect your interest list (cone of objects you’re seeing) would cause the value to update, not realizing that it affected llGetCameraRot(). There’s a fix pending, so we should hopefully have that ready for the next rolls.

Group Access to Parcel when “Sell Passes” Set

I reported on this issue in my week 39 updates. Essentially, if a region is set to group access and to “Sell Passes”, Group members ended up unable to enter the parcel at all. The problem was accidentally introduced with the recent parcel access updates, and while not widespread, is still recognised as a pain for those using the option.

Region Crossing Fixes

There are two upcoming fixes for region crossings.

The first is a fix for “‘Ghost’ avatars and vehicles sometimes appear to an observer at the sim border”. This is caused by an avatar or vehicle making a region crossing just at the limit of the observer’s  draw distance, so the simulator that the vehicle / avatar was leaving didn’t send an ObjectDelete message, since it figured the destination region would handle future object updates. However, as the observer’s viewer wasn’t connected to to the destination region, no update would be received, leaving the “ghost” image in view (“touching” it would cause it to vanish).

The second is a fix for “Vehicles which exit a region with a passenger are incorrectly autoreturned and ‘ghosted'”.  This is related to a vehicle being rezzed in a region with auto return set, and then “loitering” in the area before coincidentally trying to cross the region boundary at the time the auto return delay expired. during the crossing process, the vehicle would appear to be unoccupied to the region it was leaving – and thus be returned to the owner. In addition, the vehicle’s collision body would be “left behind” (marked as “pending delete” without actually being deleted) which could then be run into as a “ghosted” object by other vehicles.

Currently, a region restart fixes this issue.

SL Viewer Updates

There has been no promotion of an RC viewer to the de facto release viewer so far in week 40. The Maintenance viewer (support for new particle capabilities; automatic avatar render limit and feedback system) gained a further update on September 30th, with the arrival of version 3.6.7.281793.

Mac OSX 10.6 Viewer roll-back

As reported here, due to the recent Cocoa updates causing regression for users on Mac OSX 10.6, the Lab has opted to roll-back all users on that operating system to version 3.6.4.280048 (August 20th, 2013).

Interest List Viewer

It’s now believed that the Interest List viewer is around two weeks from appearing as either a project viewer or an RC viewer.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 40 (2): SSA, group ban list, upcoming bug fixes” →

SL projects update week 40 (1): server releases, group ban list, interest list

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 40

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

Second Life Server (Main Channel)

There have been no updates to the Main channel.

Second Life RC BlueSteel, RC Magnum, and RC LeTigre – Wednesday October 2nd

All three RCs should receive the same maintenance package comprising:

  • A fix for a bug affecting group notice delivery to large groups whereby the notice randomly fails to reach some group members
  • Interest list preparatory work for more correct sort order during scene load
  • New JSON_DELETE option to llJsonSetValue(), for deleting elements in JSON strings. Usage: ‘string output_json = llJsonSetValue(string input_json, [list location, JSON_DELETE)’ will delete the element specified by the location argument

Release notes: BlueSteel, LeTigre and Magnum.

Simulator UG meeting, October 1st, 2013
Simulator UG meeting, October 1st, 2013

Region Crossing Issue Update

Speaking at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday October 1st, Andrew Linden reported that both he and Maestro had been looking into the recent problems with region crossings which have been hard to pin down to a specific cause. However, Andrew was confident one cause had now been identified, saying:

It appears that there is a bug when vehicles cross region boundaries on parcels with autoreturn. “In particular, if the vehicle has been on the parcel long enough to trigger autoreturn, it won’t actually get autoreturned because someone is sitting on it. But when it tries to cross the region boundary with the rider things fall apart.

Simon Linden indicated he had a proposed fix for the issue, which he wanted to discuss with Andrew outside of the meeting, but hopes that the fix will be in a position to be deployed in week 41 (commencing Monday October 7th).

Group Ban List

The obligatory Baker Linden shot :)
The obligatory Baker Linden shot 🙂

Following-on from the update given on his behalf at the TPV Developer meeting on Friday September  27th, Baker Linden appeared at the Simulator User Group meeting to provide a rapid-fire update on his latest state-of-play with the group ban list work (see JIRA VWR-29337):

Today I’ll be working on merging the viewer code with what’s in release, and I’ll be working on getting up some actual builds to deploy to a grid for internal testing (it is not Aditi yet). so by the end of the day, I should have all the components deployed and ready for internal testing, and depending on how well that goes, it’ll be ready for Aditi soon!

In terms of the viewer code becoming visible, Baker believes his project viewer repository will become visible soon, most likely around the time of the next TPV developer meeting, when he is due to explain the new functionality.

In the meantime there’s still some further work required on the code, as he explained. “There are still a few small bugs and issues I have to work on in the code — I’ll be working on those while internal testing is happening. There’s a major refactor in llpanelgroupinvite, which is what I’m trying to hand-merge today.”

Interest List Work and Video

Andrew Linden has been finishing-up on some additional interest list work, and is now looking to produce a video showing the “before” and “after” scene loading within a region. The “before” part of the filming is already in the can, but the region he used is now “long gone”, and so he picked-up a few suggestions from the Simulator group on regions which may offer go locations for shooting the “after” segment of the film. Essentially he’s looking for regions with lots of objects be which are not ridiculously overloaded with textures.

Other Bits

Render Weights and Calculations

Work has been going on around the issue of render weights and how they are calculated. The current Maintenance viewer has code for a new “automatic avatar render limit and feedback system”.

Que Niangao raised concern at the meeting and on the SLU forum that a constant forming a part of this system – OBJECT_RENDER_WEIGHT, which requires feedback from the viewer, and so might be used for grefing people; such as through a viewer tweaked to return highly inflated numbers for others in a region, thus allowing it to become a tool for griefing.

Responding to Que’s enquiry, Simon Linden said, “Yes … OBJECT_RENDER_WEIGHT needs to be used carefully. First, the way that is calculated is likely to change … I’m going to be working on it today, in fact.”

He went on to indicate that he’s been gathering data on avatar weightings (samples from about 500 avatars) which he’ll be using to make the changes, although he may be seeking further assistance. The changes he’s looking to make are on the server, but he was a little circumspect on details out of concern that going too deeply into how things work on the server as do so could make it easier for the unscrupulous to game the system.

One area where the new system will hopefully have an impact is in preventing the use of worn sim laggers impacting a region as can currently be the case.

SL projects update week 39 (2): Server, viewer, region crossings

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 39

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

  • On Tuesday September 24th the main channel updated to the server project that was on Magnum last week, with the llXorbase64 (see my week 35 (2) update ), a number of JSON updates, the nerfing of recursive rezzing (outlined in my week 35 (1) report), a parcel access update (see below) and more – see the release notes for details
  • On Wednesday September 25th, all three RV channels (BlueSteel, LeTigre, Magnum) received the same update package as deployed to the Main channel.

Parcel Access Update Bug

At the Server Beta meeting on Thursday September 26th, Maestro revealed that the parcel access update, designed to enable users who are on a parcel’s “Allowed Access” list now correctly bypass other parcel restrictions (such as “Payment Info On File”) when entering the parcel, introduced an unexpected bug. He it as:

If you have a group-owned parcel, and the parcel access is restricted to group members, *and* “sell passes to..” is set, then group members can’t access the parcel, which isn’t good. My guess is that nobody noticed in RC because “sell passes to” isn’t widely used.

The classic behaviour was this one motorcycling sim had it set up; you could either join the group for L$300 and have permanent access to their roads, or alternatively pay L$100 for a one time pass to visit … With the bug, even the group members couldn’t access (though oddly they weren’t prompted to buy a pass either – entry just failed). It may have been that the viewer expected the classic behaviour, so didn’t prompt about a pass. Anyway, we do have a pending fix for the issue.

Maestro Linden's new meeting venue (complete with materials), which saw its debut at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday September 26th.
Maestro Linden’s new meeting venue (complete with materials), which saw its debut at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday September 26th.

Week 40 Deployments

While the final decisions on deployment packaged are not made until the start of the week in which they are due, Maestro Linden gave a hint of some of the items liable to see the light of day in week 40 (week commencing Monday September 30th)

  • A further LSL update for JSON support, which will see JSON_DELETE added as an option to llJsonSetValue() and allows you to delete an element directly
  • A fix for a group notice bug which causes a notice (possibly only in some groups, it’s not entirely clear) randomly failing to reach some group members

Commenting on the latter, Simon added, “That group one is kind of minor. There still seem to be issues with groups, even with this fix, but it may help … Group notices have gotten more reliable lately, thanks to Monty’s http work, I think, but I’m still hearing of notices getting lost sometimes, or the sender not getting one.”

Maestro also confirmed that there is a separate bug related to offline notices failing to reach people’s e-mails, with some at the meeting reporting they haven’t received any off-line notices for the past month.

SL Viewer Updates

On Wednesday September 25th, the Lab launched SLShare, and with it introduced a new RC viewer – version 3.6.7.281331 – with the new OPTIONAL share with Facebook capabilities.

The four tabs of the new SLShare floater, allowing people to share their SL times via their Facebook account if they so wish
The four tabs of the new SLShare floater, allowing people to share their SL times via their Facebook account if they so wish

Continue reading “SL projects update week 39 (2): Server, viewer, region crossings” →

SL projects update week 39 (1): server and general items

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 39

As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

Second Life Server (Main Channel) – Tuesday September 24th

The main channel updated to the server project that was on Magnum last week, comprising:

  • A fix for the llXorbase64 issue reported on in my week 35 (2) update  (BUG-3763)
  • A fix for an issue where an avatar sitting at high altitude may appear to be located at 0,0 on both the world map and mini map (BUG-3332)
  • A fix for “llReturnObjectsByID breaks on string uuids”
  • Fixes for a number of JSON function issues:
  • Nerfing of recursive rezzing. Again, this was outlined in my week 35 (1) report. Under the new code, the copy of the original object will inherit the temp-on-rez and parcel time of the originating object and so be returned at the same time
  • Users who are on a parcel’s “Allowed Access” list now correctly bypass other parcel restrictions (such as “Payment Info On File”) when entering the parcel
  • Crash mode fixes.

Second Life RC BlueSteel, RC Magnum, and RC LeTigre – Wednesday September 25th

All three RC channels should receive the same update package as deployed to the Main channel (see above for a summary of changes). Release notes: BlueSteel, LeTigre, Magnum.

Region Restart Issues

The last few weeks have apparently seen an increase in the number of reports being filed against regions restarting in an unhealthy state following a restart. Talking at the Simulator User Group on Tuesday September 24th, Whirly Fizzle related the problems thus:

After rolling restarts, many regions come back in an unhealthy state in that no mesh will rez on them, you appear offline to all your friends if you are on said region, your friends lists & groups lists don’t load, you cannot initiate IM sessions & you usually disconnect when attempting to TP out of those regions. (Caps fail I guess?). Restarting the region fixes it. As far as I know this used to happen rarely after rolls but now it appears pretty common.

Some people have reported increasing issues with regions immeidately following a rolling restart
Some people have reported increasing issues with regions returning in an unhealthy state immediately following a rolling restart

Both Simon and Andrew Linden leaned towards the problems being indicative of a caps fail issue, with Simon speculating, “I suspect the caps system is overloaded in a server restart … there may be too many regions coming up at once, doing all the housework to get into the grid, etc, and it falls apart.  That’s just a wild guess, however.” He also pointed to the problem possibly being connectivity-related.

As a result, Andrew has said he’ll look deeper into the problem and also check with LL’s Release team, who actually handle the rollouts to see if they have any insight into what may be happening, and if it is a broken caps issue. In the meantime, those experiencing issues of the kind indicated by Whirly should file a bug report, making sure they include the server names (e.g. simXXXX.agni.lindenlab.com available in Help > About Second Life) both before and after running a manual restart.

SL Viewer Updates

There has been no release candidate promotion to the de facto release viewer as yet in week 39. However, the remaining two release candidates updated recently as follows:

  • The Maintenance release RC (support for new particle capabilities; automatic avatar render limit and feedback system) updated on September 20th to version 3.6.7.281236, and then on September 24th to version 3.6.7.281385
  • The Snowstorm contributions RC (request teleport feature) updated on September 20th to version  3.6.7.281199.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 39 (1): server and general items” →