Tag: Server Updates

SL project updates week 10/1: server, general news

Posted on by Inara Pey

Leka, Nordan om Jorden; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr Leka, Nordan om Jorden (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments

Tuesday, March 3rd, saw the Main (SLS) channel receive the server maintenance package deployed to the RC channels in week #9. This includes:

  • A server-side fix for BUG-8297, “Unable to teleport anywhere using SLGO”
  • Improvements to server logging.

There were no scheduled deployments to the RC channels on Wednesday, March 4th.

Group Chat

Following the last deployment of back-end group chat changed during week #9, some large groups with active group chat have reported an increase in issues of message failures, although they appear to do so somewhat randomly, with some people seeing them and others simply not receiving them at all.

Commenting on the problem at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, March 3rd, Simon Linden summarised the situation thus:

In short, yes, it’s cranky, and yes, we’re (as in I am) looking at it … the chat server itself is actually running better than before, believe it or not. A back-end service it relies on, what we call “agent presence” [used to help locate someone on the grid], seems to be having new problems, so the changes may have added load to those servers and is causing problems, or something else unexpectedly changed … [So] some people don’t get the messages when chat is failing … it’s dropping sending some updates and messages when it times out with some other internal requests.

Further updates will be provided as the Lab / Simon continues to look at the problems.

CDN Notes

There have been recent reports of people experiencing slow texture and mesh load issues, leading to questions concerning the CDN service (although some of the issues that have been mentioned might be related to local caching more than the CDN). In particular questions have been asked as to how long a CDN server retained its cache of data relating to regions prior to going “cold” and requiring a “reload” from the SL services. Commenting on this at the Open-source Developer meeting on Monday, March 2nd, Oz Linden said that some CDN caches do age out more quickly than others.

The Lab has also been experimenting with more than one CDN provider, and are continuing with different CDN configurations as well to further tune things, as well as continuing to measure results; so we may yet see further changes  / improvements, and a possible decrease in instances that may be related to “cold” CDN loads.

Other Items

Rigged Mesh Crashers

The Server Beta Meeting on Thursday, February 26th saw the issue of a “new” mesh crasher being used on the grid. This is essentially a deliberately corrupted rigged mesh attachment which, when worn will cause viewers around it to immediately crash, with no warning or ability to take preventative action, such as muting the offending avatar.

Just over a year ago, some advice was given on how to counter graphics crashers by adjusting the viewer’s debug settings, and some people many be getting pointed towards it again in order to avoid being affected by the “new” crasher.

However, changing the specified debug settings can lead to a failure to render much of what you actually want to see, as noted in  this comment following the article. At the time the advice was given, the Firestorm team tracked many of the problems their users were experiencing directly to the settings having been changed. Ergo, if you are pointed to this particular article as a means of combating graphics crashers, please keep in mind you may gain undesirable results, and keep a note of the original settings so you can switch back to them should this be the case.

During the discussion on this matter at the SBUG meeting, speculation was raised on whether or not the forthcoming new viewer rendering controls (see: STORM-2082). opinion is divided, as the viewer downloads the data which may cause a graphic crash and starts processing some of it in order to determine what to render or not, and even this initial processing could be enough to crash it.

SL Feed Issues

There has been an uptick in the number of snapshot uploads to the SL feeds failing over the course of the last week, with some additionally reporting issues of comments failure to appear / “loves” failing to stick. Some users also reported issues over the weekend with web profiles failing to load, and a JIRA (see BUG-8677) was logged on this issue on March 3rd.

The last several days have seen people again encounter issues with snapshots failing to process / display in their feeds
The last several days have seen people again encounter issues with snapshots failing to process / display in their feeds

Whether the two issues had a common cause isn’t clear, but as the latter has been resolved, and you are one of those continuing to experience snapshot upload failures, please file a JIRA providing as much information as possible (links to any feed post with a missing snapshot, date / time of upload, number of failures, etc.).

SL project updates week 9/1: server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey
China Grove - blog post
China Grove – blog post

Server Deployments, Week 9

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

  • There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, February 24th
  • On Wednesday, February 25th, all three RC channels will receive the same server maintenance package, which comprises:
    • A server-side fix for BUG-8297, “Unable to teleport anywhere using SLGO”
    • Improvement to server logging.

The SL Go teleport issue only affected users running the SL Viewer (SLV) supplied by OnLive, who run the SL Go service (it did not affect those using Firestorm on SL Go), and was the result of a recent server-side code clean-up which meant that OnLive’s SLV was essentially using an invalid channel name when instigating teleports, causing them to fail.

OnLive implemented a workaround for the issue on their side of things on February 3rd, however, the update included in the RC package noted above provides a fix on LL’s side of the connection as well.

SL Viewer

On Tuesday, February 24th, the Maintenance RC viewer, version 3.7.25.299021, was promoted to the de facto release viewer.  This release includes a large number of improvements and fixes to the viewer, as listed in the release notes.

This currently leaves just the new log-in viewer RC (version 3.7.25.298971 released on February 17th) and the Experience Tools RC (version 3.8.0.298001 last updated on January 15th) in the release channel for the time being.

Experience Keys / Tools

The initial release of Experience Keys / Tools is still awaiting various back-end updates to clear the Lab’s QA department, with the viewer remaining at RC status until that happens (see above). As previously noted in my Experience Keys reports, the initial release of the functionality will not support grid-wide experiences, although are likely to be on the roadmap for future enhancements.

Once released, the current iteration of the functionality is liable to be allowed to run for a number of months before the Lab starts making  (or releasing) updates, with Oz Linden commenting at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, February 24th, “there will be another round of improvements to Experiences at some point, but we’re going to give the first round some time to be adopted before we go too far with those.”

Group Chat

Group chat work is continuing, with the recent changes to handling server lock-ups reducing the number of reported freezes.

Simon Linden is also continuing to look at the code side of things, and specifically issues with group chat visibly “stalling” which switching between chat tabs and / or as a result of moving between regions. This work has been the subject of a series of “mini-tests” during the Server Beta User Group meetings held on Thursdays, and resulted in some recent code updates. Commenting on this at the SUG meeting, Simon said, “The new code also showed me details about one way the system fails, so I hope to make that better at recovering,” so further updates can likely be expected, although this may not be as broadly visible to many users as the initial group chat improvements.

SL project news week 7/1: miscellaneous; grid status page

Posted on by Inara Pey

Square Pegs in Round Holes, Kashmir Dreams; Inara Pey, February 2015, on Flickr“The Lost Town” – Square Pegs in Round Holes (Flickr) – blog post

News is a little light coming out of the Lab on projects right now, although there was a blog post on things made on Monday, February 9th, which I also blogged about. However, new for the start of the week is still a little on the light side.

Server Deployments

There are no scheduled server deployments for the week.

SL Viewer

It had been anticipated that week #6 would see the Tools update project viewer (version 3.7.25.298587) and the Avatar Hover Height project viewer (version 3.7.25.298129) both superseded by a release candidate. However, neither update occurred.

It is possible these updates will occur during week #7; however, for the time being, all of the LL viewers remain as they were at the end of week #6, and as recorded in my Current Viewer Releases page, namely:

  • Release version: 3.7.24.297623 (January 13th)
  • Release candidate versions:
    • Maintenance RC, version 3.7.25.298030 – this has a number of issues associated with it, which may prevent its promotion to the de facto release viewer (January 27th)
    • Experience Keys / Tools RC, version 3.8.0.298001 (January 14th) – this has been awaiting final server-side updates to the Experience capabilities
  • Project viewers:
    • Tool Update, version 3.7.25.298587 (January 28th)
    • Mesh importer, version 3.7.25.298441 (February 3rd) – a number of bug reports have already been filed for this viewer – see the JIRA filter list for details.
    • Avatar Hover Height, version 3.7.25.298129 (January 21st)
    • Viewer-managed Marketplace, version 3.7.21.296858 (November 19th, 2014)
    • Oculus Rift project viewer, version 3.7.18.295296 (October 13th, 2014).

Grid Status Page Relocated

As some have noticed, on Monday, February 9th, the Lab relocated the SL grid status page to a blog address, with a redirect from the “old” URL of status.secondlifegrid.net/.

However, the result has caused some confusion, notably as a result of breakage across sites and links referring to the “old” URL. Even some of the updates on the secondlife.com dashboard users see having been generating 404 errors as a result of the move.

Commenting on the change during the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, February 10th, Simon Linden – who was out of the office when the change was made – said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen with the status page … but we know the shift caused issues … we heard a lot about it breaking things that relied on it.  I’m not sure what the solution will be.”

So… watch that space…

SL project updates week 6: server; mesh importer project viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Umbral Photography, Hydra Isles (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments Week 6

On Tuesday, February 3rd, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package deployed to the three RC channels in week #5, which includes:

  • a fix for BUG-8247 “[Experience Tools] Issue with llRequestExperiencePermissions() triggering experience_permissions_denied() and XP_ERROR_NOT_PERMITTED_LAND after prior 5 minute no response period.”
  • Internal improvements for experience tools key-value functions.

There were no deployments to the RC channels for the week.

Following the Main channel deployment on Tuesday, a number of regions reported issues with objects failing to load and render, textures remaining grey, mesh outfits failing to rez / render teleport issues, etc., all of which appeared to be consistent with region capabilities failing on re-start, and thus requiring the affected regions to be manually restarted. As reported by Whirly Fizzle in the forum thread linked-to above, this has been an intermittent problem which has been occurring for over a year.

SL Viewer – Mesh Importer Update

On Wednesday, February 4th saw the release of the Importer project viewer, version 3.7.25.298441. This viewer brings various improvements to the mesh uploader / importer, which are given in the release notes as:

In this viewer we’ve modified the importer to (optionally) improve debug output, perform name-based LOD association, and handle models with many materials.

Using these new features, models with more than 8 unique faces can be imported. Gone are the days of importing complicated meshes in pieces with “some assembly required”. At import, these models are automatically split into pieces so that each satisfy the current face limits for a volume.

  • The same limitations on LODs and materials remain in place (e.g. your low LOD mesh materials must be a subset of the full LOD materials).
  • LODs and Physics reps can now be explicitly associated with a given mesh in the full LOD model using name-based matching.
  • By properly naming the meshes in your lower LOD meshes and physics reps, you can avoid issues with ordering of the meshes within your DCC tool and other material mismatching errors.
  • An ImporterDebug option has been added to the settings.xml file which, if enabled, causes more information to be output during import than you can shake a stick at. The extra output can be very helpful for diagnosing authoring errors (e.g. violating the material subset constraints mentioned above) and pinpoint what needs to be fixed in the source model for successful import.

Note that project news is a little light this week due to on-going SL planning meetings taking place at the Lab.

SL project updates week 5/1: server, viewer, misc news

Posted on by Inara Pey
The
The Illumination Library, Luminaux – blog post

Server Deployments Week 5

On Tuesday, January 27th, the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to Magnum and LeTigre, and which introduced the following changes:

  • A fix for BUG-8223 “Pictures Fail to Upload and send when Using Email Option from RC Regions”
  • a fix for BUG-8002 [Experience Tools] Allowed & Blocked experiences are lost with parcel subdivision.
  • Crash mode fixes
  • Code clean-up around avatar region crossings.

On Wednesday, January 27th, the RC channels should all receive a new server maintenance package comprising:

  • A fix for BUG-8247 “[Experience Tools] Issue with llRequestExperiencePermissions() triggering experience_permissions_denied() and XP_ERROR_NOT_PERMITTED_LAND after prior 5 minute no response period.”
  • Internal improvements for experience tools key-value functions.#

BlueSteel will also retain the Avatar Hover Height (AHH) server code with this release

 SL Viewer

A new Maintenance RC viewer arrived in the viewer release channel on Tuesday, January 27th. Version 3.7.25.298030 brings with it over 30 fixes and updates to the viewer, ranging from language improvements through build issue fixes to feature requests. Using-facing updates include:

  • Uniquely identifying URLs for Second Life or Linden Lab domains
  • Interest list fixes for:
    • Preventing some prims / items in linksets from being deselected as a result of camera movement
    • Preventing Intan solo dance animations from ceasing to animate as a result of camera movement
  • A fix for voice / speak button failing to enable after activating voice on a parcel if it was disabled on entering said parcel
  • A fix for pixel width and height of the preview is not matched to value of Width or Height text-box in the “Snapshot to inventory” tab
  • A fix for prim size reverting to default size when scaled down and shift copied
  • A fix for an avatar’s sitting position becomes corrupted if ALT-SHIFT-S keyboard short cut is used  while editing appearance
  • Feature request: CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-T shows up as notice toasts.
One of the changes in the new maintenance viewer allows SL / Lab URLs to be automatically indicated within the viewer
One of the changes in the new maintenance viewer allows SL / Lab URLs to be automatically indicated within the viewer – note the icon compared to an URL for an external link

For the full list of updates in this viewer, please refer to the download and release notes page.

Other Items

LL recruiting Specifically for SL

While it is all over Twitter, it’s probably worth pointing out that as well as hiring for their new platform, the Lab is also still hiring people specifically to work on Second Life.

SL project updates 2015 week 4/2: misc news

Posted on by Inara Pey

Salt Water; Inara Pey, December 2014, on FlickrWith Love in Her Heart, Sounds of Silence (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments – Week 4 Recap

  • There was no Main (SLS) channel deployment during the week
  • On Thursday, January 22nd, the RC channels were updated as follows:
    • LeTigre and Magnum received the same server maintenance package which included a fix for BUG-8223, introduced to all three RC channels in the week #3 deployment
    • BlueSteel received a server maintenance package which contained the same fix for BUG-8223 and also support for the new Avatar Hover Height capability

SL Viewer – Avatar Hover Height

The Avatar Hover Height project viewer was released on Wednesday, January 21st, however, an issue with the SL wiki means that it currently cannot be reached via the Alternate Viewers wiki page, which is currently showing an out-of-date listing. Those wishing to download the viewer can do so from here.

For details on Avatar Hover Height in general, please refer to my overview.

Other Items

SL Wiki

The ability for users to edit SL wiki pages was re-enabled on Thursday, January 22nd, after an extended period in which they were only editable by Lab personnel. However, whether the two are connected or not, but subsequent to the wiki being opened for editing, a number of pages appeared to revert to earlier versions or became inaccessible (e.g. the Alternate Viewers wiki page reverted to a version from late December 2014, while the pages for the RC channel release notes were replaced by blank pages).

The Lab is obviously aware of the issue, and looking into it.

CDN News

The Lab has been / is testing an additional CDN provider (to Highwinds, whom they currently use). It’s not clear where the testing is going, and when asked about it at the Server Beta User Group (SBUG) meeting on Thursday January 22nd, Simon linden could only say, “it was going to allow a lot more flexibility so we could have different regions on different CDNs … or something similar.   It might have been different areas of the world on different CDNs.”

Doubtless, if / when the project moves forward, we’ll get to hear more.

And on a Lighter Note

On Monday, January 19th, people started reporting that an old group logo – Whore Couture – was appearing in place of assorted group’s usual logo, as shown in the image below, taken from BUG-8255, “Whore Couture Logo Appearing on Several Groups”, where the problem was formally reported.

BUG-8255 reported the random appearance of an old Sl brand logo - Whore couture - appearing in place of various group's usual logo
BUG-8255 reported the random appearance of an old SL brand logo – Whore couture – appearing in place of various group’s usual logo

The cause of the problem was later revealed by Soft Linden:

An engineer grabbed a random group’s image as a placeholder and put it in place of an old asset ID that was used as the default image for many groups. It was meant as a temporary measure while he was doing some other texture work. Unfortunately, he didn’t look at the image he selected and I expect he would have chosen plywood instead if he had.

The image has been removed, but it may take some time before that propagates through the CDN and viewer caches.

Don’t worry, we’re not going to let him live this down. In the mean time, we’re building some better process around this.