Tag: Server Updates

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 14th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, the server deployment thread had not been published.

• Tuesday, September 14th: no deployment to the Main SLS channel.
• Wednesday, September 15th all simhosts should be updated to the same revisions to the new server configuration that was deployed to the Ferrari RC in week #36.

HTTP-Out Proxy

Monty Linden deployed the new HTTP-out proxies in week #36. It wasn’t entirely glitch-free (but not as bad as the August attempt), with issues occurring in a part of the configuration that didn’t allow for immediate correction. Monty hopes that the lessons learnt with make future deployments smoother.

SL Viewer

No updates to the current batch of official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.23.563012, dated August 24.
  • Happy Hour Maintenance 2 viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, issued August 23 (dated August 20).
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9.
• Project viewers:
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3.
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

• The question was asked on why, when set using llCollisionSound, the sound heard on colliding with an object will revert to the default if the script making the change is removed, rather than being retained as a prim property (like other sounds “scripted into” an object). This is because currently, the sound remains a property of the script, but there are plans to make it consistent with other prim properties.
• LL are working on “stuff” (Mazidox Linden’s term) to help with more efficient script running within regions. The precise details remained unspecified, although some aspects of the work are already on at least some of the RCs channels, and the hope is to get more grid-wide by the end of the year.
• The Percentage Script Run metric within the viewer stats (CTRL-SHIFT-1) is not seen by the Lab as a particularly useful metric when compared to something like total scripts run, as the Percentage Run metric can depend on circumstance, rather than being indicative of actual simulator performance.
  • Example: a region running 1000 out of 1000 scripts in a frame will report 100%, whilst a region running 1000 out of 10,000 will report 10% – but both are processing the same number of scripts, and so performing equally in this regard.
  • Monty Linden also pointed out that the Percentage Run metric can easily be warped simply by the behaviour of a single script, and noted he has some new internal metrics he is testing that he hopes might provide a better perspective of script performance within a region.
• The above points led to an open discussion on script processing as a whole: the use of “fairness” policies to prevent parcels within a region making too heavy a call on simulator / simhost resources (including being swamped by heady script loads on avatars, etc.); allocating script memory size; general ideas on improving script efficiency through the use of things like regular expressions; etc.
  • This conversation included a comment from Rider Linden that LL would be interested in the Firestorm script pre-processor were it to be contributed.
  • The suggestion was made that LL could provide HTTP-out access using the AWS Dynamo DB for those who need bigger KVP databases – and it was pointed out that users can always rent their out Dynamo DB stack.
  • No specifics on what the Lab might or won’t do vis scripts and script management, although Monty Linden revealed he’s been personally speculating on the advantages (or otherwise) of “higher level functionality” in the LSL libraries so that “more could be done with less code” – although he has only general ideas of possible functions in this regard.
  • See the video for more on specifics.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 7th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, the server deployment thread had not been published.

• Tuesday, September 7th: no deployment to the Main SLS channel.
• Wednesday, September 8th should she all of the the remaining simhost on the SLS RC channels (Magnum, BlueSteel, Le Tigre and Ferrari) moved to the new AWS server configuration as mentioned here, which will cause some incidental changes to how mesh land impact is calculated, but the primary change will be a small but noticeable bump in speed for most regions.
  • The new configuration can also cause a slight variation on floating point rounding that can show up in Land Impact calculations under rare circumstances. However, LL believes the impact is going to be so limited, it’s unlikely most people will notice.
  • In addition, RC Ferrari may get an update to the simulator configuration, if cleared by QA.

HTTP-Out Proxy

Monty Linden is also going to attempt a fresh deployment of the new HTTP-out proxies. The original deployment in late August went sideways very quickly. The hope is that this deployment will go a lot smoother. HTTP listeners are not changed by this update.

SL Viewer

No updates to the current batch of official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.23.563012, dated August 24.
  • Happy Hour Maintenance 2 viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, issued August 23 (dated August 20).
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9.
• Project viewers:
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.4.23.563579, issued September 3 – overview here.
  • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2  – overview here.
  • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

• Work is still progressing on the tools update.
• The majority of the meeting involved a general discussion (largely among users present) as to the merits of providing support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and animated gifs; the cloning of regions, a concern that the lack of defragmentation in the KVP (experiences) database might lead to issues for those reaching the limits of their allowed space (to be investigated), and a texture issue apparently specific to a single Skill Gaming region (referred to support). As this discussion did not yield definitive news / options for action / response by the Lab, please refer to the video below for further information.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 31st, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for updates.

• All simulators on both the Tuesday, August 31st and Wednesday September 1st deployments will be updated to simulator release 563385, which is functionally and configurationally identical to the 562252 SLS Main Channel deployment of the previous week.
• The RC deployment on Wednesday, September 1st will additionally continue to process of changing all RC regions over to a new AWS server configuration as mentioned here, which will cause some incidental changes to how mesh land impact is calculated, but the primary change will be a small but noticeable bump in speed for most regions.
  • The new configuration can also cause a slight variation on floating point rounding that can show up in Land Impact calculations under rare circumstances. However, LL believes the impact is going to be so limited, it’s unlikely most people will notice.

Week #34 RC Deployment

The RC deployment originally planned for the previous week (Wednesday, August 25th) was pulled back due to a late-breaking issue. A fix has been implemented, but Mazidox Linden has indicated he wants to comb through the release before passing it as ready for deployment.

General Deployment Notes

• As of the week commencing Monday, August 30th, 2021, the weekly planned deployment window is to be 06:00-11:00 SLT, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, subject to actual updates being available to deploy.
• Rolling restarts will generally take place across all simhosts that have not been restarted in the past 14 days

Tuesday August 30th Issues

Tuesday, August 31st saw extended issues across a number of Second Life services, as per this SL grid status report, which were still on-going at the time of the SUG meeting. These issues appeared to be related to a significant problem at the AWS centre in Oregon, USA, where the SL services are currently hosted.

SL Viewer

No updates to the current batch of official viewers to mark the start of the week, leaving the current pipelines as follows:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24th and promoted August 10th.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.23.563012, dated August 24th.
  • Happy Hour Maintenance 2 viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, issued August 23rd (dated August 20th).
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, dated August 9th.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26th.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9th, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22nd, 2019.
  • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16th, 2019.

In Brief

• Rider Linden continues to work on the tools update for the simulators, and believes he may have something that could help improve the scripts run percentage issue, but also emphasises it is currently too early to make any promises that it will actually do so.
• BUG-231158 “Allow llGetNotecardLine to return more than 255 bytes” has been raised as a result of a conversation about raising the limit to 1024 bytes, which Rider Linden indicated shouldn’t be too problematic – subject to proper review of course.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 24th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the discussion where there is something to report.

Server Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for updates.

• There were no deployments to the SLS Main channel on Tuesday, August 24th, leaving the simulator version at 562252.
•  On Wednesday, August 25th, all SLS RC channels should be updated to simulator version 2021-08-19.563028. This will see all simhosts on these channels receive the changes intended to improve simulator performance first made with deployment 561609. In addition the simulators on these channels will have fixes for BUG-231064 “The changes to llUnsit() that allow experience use are not working” and an update to ensure llChar() now properly returns the Unicode Replacement Character (�) for all out of range, even if the input value is negative.

HTTP Out Proxies Oopsie

Tuesday, August 24th did see a back-end update, which those using objects using HTTP may have noticed, with their URL becoming invalid. Monty Linden described the situation thus:

This morning at 09: 00 SLT, I started a deploy of the new http-out proxies. Within the first minute, the whole thing had gone badly. [We] Ended up with a resource conflict and AWS rolled back, as is its habit. Unfortunately, a small load balancer change was already in play. For reasons known and unknown, LB rollback often is a bit rough and traffic out the edge was impacted. [The issue] took about 5-10 minutes to clear. 

I will try that again after some tool fixes, and hopefully avoid the disruption. Sincerest apologies for the service interruption.

SL Viewer

The Happy Hour Maintenance 2 viewer, version 6.4.23.562602, was released on Monday, August 23rd (viewer dated August 20th). This viewer includes a range of fixes, including crash fixes and EEP improvements. This viewer also sees the viewer toolchain updated to C++17.

All other official viewers remain as follows:

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10  – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, issued August 9.
  • Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.22.561850, issued July 29.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
  • 360° Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

In Brief

• Some have been a little confused over grid-wide Experiences. .At the meeting, it was repeated that such Experiences are the preserve of Linden Lab only; there are no plans in the works to make user-created Experiences grid-wide.
• Some have reported traffic count issues for their regions. LL have noted there was a problem “a few weeks ago”, but it should have been resolved. Anyone finding their region is not reporting traffic correctly should file a bug report.
• The adjustment to resolve the issue of Mainland regions looking excessively dark under certain EEP lighting (e.g. when shadows are enabled in the viewer) is across all regions, as previously reported in these update, but the switch to enable it has yet to be thrown.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 17th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the discussion where there is something to report.

Server Deployments

There are no planned deployments for week #33, with Mazidox Linden leaving the following note in the deployment thread:

There are no rolls planned for the week of August 16th. We’re looking at possibly rolling out our performance optimizing configuration changes to all RCs next week and putting a new maintenance release on RCs that are already optimized, but we need some more time to gather and parse the relevant data, plus testing the Maintenance release.

SL Viewer

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

• Release viewer: version version 6.4.22.561752, formerly the CEF Update RC viewer, issued July 24 and promoted August 10  – NEW.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Simplified Cache RC viewer, version 6.4.22.561873, issued August 9.
  • Grappa Maintenance RC, version 6.4.22.561850, issued July 29.
• Project viewers:
  • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
  • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
  • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
  • 360° Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

360° Snapshot Viewer

As I’ve reported through both my Content Creation User Group and TPV Developer Meeting updates, work has resumed on the 360° Snapshot viewer. This takes a total of 6 images  (four around your camera position and one looking down and one looking up), which are then stitched together into a 360° image that can be used on various platforms. Part of the work has involved in getting the viewer able to take these shots has involved making simulator-side changes to ensure that objects not in your direct field of view at the time the snapshot is initiated (e.g. behind your camera) will be rendered correctly when all of the images are captured by the viewer.

This work, as well as updates to the viewer, has now reached a point where Alexa Linden has been out and about testing the viewer, and you can see the results of her trials on Flickr (be sure to click on the images to engage Flickr’s 360° playback). There is no data on when the updated project viewer will be publicly available but it will apparently it will be “Real Soon Now”.

In Brief

• The code for controlling the data one what the viewer needs to render is called the Interest List. There have been some issues with this code, and further work to improve it is planned, but has not climbed sufficiently up the priority list to gain attention as yet.
• The “2 second delay” rezzing bug continues to be an issue, particularly in combat-related regions where weapons require projectile rezzing. In encountering the issue, users have noted the following:
  • Restarting a region can eliminate / reduce the impact of the bug for around a 24-hour period before it starts to be a problem once more.
  • The more scripts within a newly-rezzed object, the longer the delay in rezzing.

I’m fairly certain that something is not getting released correctly. It is a matter of hunting it down and see what’s holding onto that memory.

– Rider Linden

• BUG-229301 “Maximum Memory allowable by scripts not being reset until teleport or relog” – this also continues to be a problem, and it has been observed that temp attachments suffer the same issue with recently recompiled scripts: the script memory on the avatar increases when the temp object is attached, but does not go down after the object is removed and no longer exists, although a region crossing or teleport will correct the memory.
• Some using external services are still seeing 5xx errors with HTTP-out messaging. Those experiencing them appear to find them more an annoyance than a show-stopper.