Tag: SL Issues

SL projects update 22 (2): SSB/A issues, materials, server issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – week 22

The server channel deployments were delayed 24 hours this week due to Monday May 27th being Memorial Day in the USA.  This being the case:

  • On Wednesday 29th May, the Main channel received the server maintenance project previously on Magnum. This includes bug fixes, comprising two for crash modes and one for BUG-2424 (Overriding “Sitting on Ground” animation while sitting on the ground makes “stand up” button disappear). This deployment also included the LSL support to create and parse JSON-formatted strings, which also included the bug fixes for this capability deployed to Magnum in week 21 (see my SL projects update report from week 21). Release notes
  • On Thursday 30th May, the three Release Candidate (RC) channels received the interest list improvement project deployed to LeTigre in week 21. The core change in this update should reduce scene loading time when entering a new region (again, please refer to my week 21 report for background information). Release notes (BlueSteel, but applicable to all three RCs).

Server-side Baking / Appearance

As noted in these pages, the Lab formally announced the forthcoming arrival of SSB/A on May 29th. This has prompted questions of “when?” Again, as I’ve previously reported, the Lab is proceeding cautiously towards a server-side deployment, even though they are encouraging people to swap to a version of their preferred viewer which is SSB/A-enabled sooner rather than later.

Currently, the two regions for TPV testing have been enabled with the new service and TPVs are putting the new capability through its places – and this has already revealed a reason for the Lab’s understandable reluctance to give out firm dates, as a potentially major issue has been identified.

SUN-74, raised on May 29th, shows that if you are wearing a MOD skin, hairbase or eyes and you enter an SSB/A-enabled region using a non-SSB/A enabled viewer, an alert will appear on your screen which, on clearing, is followed by an innocuous-looking prompt.

The alert and prompt which are displayed when using a non-SSB/A enabled viewer when entering an SSB/A-enabled region
The alert and prompt which are displayed when using a non-SSB/A enabled viewer when entering an SSB/A-enabled region (image courtesy of Whirly Fizzle)

Clicking YES in reply to the prompt can result in the currently worn skin / eyes / hairbase to become irreparably corrupted, with a skin turning  a mixture of black / invisible and eyes turning white. Rebaking will not fix the issue. Relogging to an SSB/A-enabled viewer seems to result in the avatar rendering as a cloud, and / or ending up with a default skin and ruthed. Replacing the affected items (skin and/or eyes and/or hairbase, depending on which has / have been corrupted) with others from you inventory will fix the issue, but re-wearing the corrupted item(s) results in the avatar once more appearing corrupted (and again ruthed, if running an SSB/A-enabled viewer).

Whirly Fizzle demonstrates the result of the SUN-74 issue
Whirly Fizzle demonstrates one aspect of the SUN-74 issue – on a non-SSB/A viewer, her MOD skin has turned black / invisible and her MOD eyes have turned white as a result of entering an SSB/A-enabled region and responding with YES to the given prompt.

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SL projects update week 19 (2): Interest list, missing prims, griefing

Posted on by Inara Pey

Interest List Update

As noted in week 18, Andrew Linden has been working on fixing a bug related to Meeroos (but which I’ve seen affecting other animals as well).

If you turn your camera away from a crowd of Meeroos, wait several seconds, then turn back around… the Meeroos will be updated, but not quite in the right order. So sometimes you’ll see a head move to the new position, then a fraction of a second later the rest of the body.  So I have a theoretical fix that doesn’t crash the simulator (anymore)

Reporting on the situation at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday May 7th, he said, “Right before this meeting I was rounding up some meeroos to do some testing on the beta grid. The bug is theoretically fixed, but I’ve yet to actually see it work. We’ll be testing this week.” If all goes well, the fix may well be progressing towards an RC release in the near future.

“Missing Prims”

Still no major news on this issue in terms of a lasting fix becoming available. Commenting on it again during the Simulator User Group Meeting, Andrew Linden said:

We were having trouble reproducing it on one of our more recent viewers; the viewer that will eventually go along with the recent interest list fixes, is currently stalled for a mysterious crash bug.

We think the “right click to make the object show up” bug is related to loading of object cache in the viewer and that loading code has had an overhaul in this recent viewer project. So we think the bug is fixed there, but we have yet to test it a lot. Because there is a crash bug we’re still trying to track down.

"Missing" prims - viewer-side fix stalled; code might be made available to TPVs anyway?
“Missing” prims – viewer-side fix stalled; code might be made available to TPVs anyway?

The question was asked if the code could be made available to TPVs as it is, even if prone to crashing. Doing so might provide extra eyes on the problem which may both help to resolve the issue and fix the crash issue. Andrew replied to the question by saying, “Oz asked us to put that code out on a public repo, but that was before we realized we had a crash problem.” However, he agreed to take the request back to the office and see what the reaction might be.

Other Bits – Griefing Issues

There has been a long-standing issue with objects sitting on the region borders being very hard to return to their owners, and which has become something of an exploit where mainland griefing is concerned. It had been hoped that the fix for the issue would be deployed to the grid this week, However, in reviewing matters, Andrew linden regretfully reported that “It appears that ‘return of objects at region border’ bug fix is not deployed at the moment, as far as I can tell.”  There is currently no date as to when this will be deployed,

Similarly, there is still no news as to when the particle muting capability (right-click on a particle to stop your viewer generating the particle stream in your world-view) might make a viewer-side appearance.

There are reports of a new form of particularly malicious griefing involving spinning / flashing objects which appear deliberately designed to trigger epilepsy or migraine.  At the Simulator UG meeting, Simon Linden indicated that the Lab is at least aware of this form of attack.

Blocking Banned Users’ Objects from Rendering

A suggestion has been put forward at several Simulator UG meetings where griefing has been discussed that all objects on a parcel belonging to a user banned from that parcel for griefing should no longer be rendered for other users within that parcel.

This is seen as a particularly useful option at events, etc., where time would otherwise be taken up in trying to locate and return objects which may have been left behind when banning the user, and / or in telling other people in the parcel how to mute offending objects from their view.

Commenting on this as a possible server-side capability, Andrew Linden said, “More fidelity of visibility on a per-parcel level would further complicate things that are already fairly complicated. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it would be tricky and I would worry about lag issues… server lag as it picks up more work.”

However, after a discussion on the viability of viewer-side blocking and server-side blocking, he commented, “I’m hip… if visibility of banned owners’ objects were to be done… it would probably be easiest to do it at the server.” Even so, there would still be a range of issues to deal with, were such a capability to be put into place. As it stands, it appears to be more a case of food-for-thought than a definite step to be taken.

Forced Object Return

Another griefing attack is one which sees an object deposited in a region but which doesn’t actually trigger until after the region is restarted. This means it gets included in the region back-up – and any subsequent region restart, leaving it free to annoy.

A suggestion was put forward at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday May, 2nd to force a return of all objects in a region which are not set to the required Group as a part of the region restart process. This idea gained some support at the meeting and might have resulted in a feature request being filed. However, it is not without issues of its own – such as with regions where Group object rezzing isn’t a requirement, where it could result in a lot of items which might otherwise have been “safe” returned to their owners.

SL projects update week 18 (2): server releases

Posted on by Inara Pey

Deployments for Week 18

The week 18 deployments make for interesting reading.

SLS Main Channel

On Tuesday April 30th, the Main channel was rolled back to release 13.04.05.273580, as a result of a widespread performance issue.

Release Candidate Channels

  • BlueSteel and LeTigre: both of these channels should remain on the Experience Keys project, but will also be reverting some changes, due to the same performance issue which is affecting the Main channel – release notes
  • Magnum: should remain on the same server maintenance project as week 17.  This project brings some new minor features to LSL, and fixes some crash modes.  This update fixes the grid performance issue, and fixes an issue in which llDialog() messages sent to the object owner could be incorrectly throttled – release notes.

The performance issue which caused the Main channel to see the re-deployment of an older release was described by Simon Linden as being related to problems with regions locating their neighbours. “The performance problem was really showing up between any one region trying to locate another on the grid … the system was actually working, but too close to the cliff for comfort.” The re-deployment means that the new LSL AO capabilities can no longer be compiled / run on any Main, BlueSteel or LeTigre regions, until the supporting code is rolled-out once more.

There is still no further detail on the Experience Keys project and whether this may / may not be more than a deployment of the Advanced Creation Tools permission system.

Interest List Update

Andrew Linden has been working on fixing a bug related to Meeroos (but which I’ve seen affecting other animals as well), which he describes as, “If you turn your camera away from a crowd of Meeroos, wait several seconds, then turn back around… the Meeroos will be updated, but not quite in the right order. So sometimes you’ll see a head move to the new position, then a fraction of a second later the rest of the body.  So I have a theoretical fix that doesn’t crash the simulator (anymore).” The fix in question has yet to be tested and QA’d, so there is no time frame for any release.

“Missing” Prims

While talking about the interest list work, Andrew answered a question on missing prims / linksets, again acknowledging it to be a viewer-side issue, before going on to say:

We think maybe it is fixed in a new viewer. But this new viewer I mention happens to be very crashy, so we haven’t opened up the source code for it yet nor have we submitted it to our QA team since they’ll just crash …  This is the viewer that goes with our new interest list changes which I mentioned a few weeks ago and people were wondering when the code would be put up on a public repo.

"Missing" prims - viewer-side fix possibly on the way?
“Missing” prims – viewer-side fix possibly on the way?

So a viewer-side fix, along with viewer-side interest list updates, looks to be somewhere on the horizon.

Region Crossings

There have been a number of reports of region crossings worsening again after seeing a significant improvement with the release of the fix for BUG-1814. A common issue has been avatars becoming “snagged” at a region boundary while the vehicle they were travelling in continuing on its way, sometimes being returned to their Lost and Found folder from a location two or three regions beyond where the avatar became stuck. Both prim/sculpt and mesh vehicles are affected when the problem occurs, and it is an issue which had been encountered prior to the widespread deployment of the BUG-1814 fix.

Getting "snagged" at a region crossing while my aircraft flew on was a problem I encountered several times over Blake Sea early in April. The problem has again manifested itself to many, and I've again encountered it while flying my mesh Spitfire Mark IX
Getting “snagged” at a region crossing while my aircraft flew on was a problem I encountered several times over Blake Sea early in April. The problem has again manifested itself to many, and I’ve again encountered it while flying my mesh Spitfire Mark IX

I’d actually encountered the problem on April 4th during a series of region crossing tests, but the problem no longer appeared to be occurring by the middle of the month.

The issue of region crossings was raised at the Simulator Meeting on Tuesday May 30th, but the discussion was dominated by the problems being encountered by one particular type of train. In commenting more generally on region crossings, Andrew Linden said, “I agree that region crossing on vehicles needs more work. I can’t promise that I’ll be working on that as soon as I’m done with this interest list project, but I’ll try to bring it up in the next ‘what do we work on next’ brainstorm that we have.”

Marketplace: incorrect listings – LL offers “clean-up process”

Posted on by Inara Pey

In March 2012, merchants started noticing issues with some (or even many, in a number of cases) SL Marketplace listings. Key issues included:

  • Listings on Marketplace stores do not match the actual items
  • Incorrect merchant attribution (products from Merchant X listed as belonging to Merchant Y, despite appearing in Merchant X’s store)
  • Products from one merchant appearing in stores belonging to other merchants
  • Items incorrectly priced
  • Incorrect ratings assigned to products (G-rated items appearing as Adult, etc.).
An exmaple of the listing errors, supplied courtesy of Lillou Merlin
An example of the listing errors, supplied courtesy of Lillou Merlin

A JIRA –WEB-4587 – was raised on the matter, and extensive forum thread also reported the matter, and merchants were assured the matter was being looked into as a “top priority”, and in May 2012, an updated was issued by the Commerce Team noting that:

(WEB-4587) Listings show up with images from other Merchants listings:Current status: we have identified the problem and are working on testing the fix.

The fix apparently didn’t work, as the issue was subsequently reported as one the Commerce Team would address “after the next Marketplace update“. This only problem here being that subsequent updates failed to address the majority of JIRA relating to Marketplace issues, including WEB-4587 – and then stopped altogether – something with prompted me to comment on the continuing erosion of merchant trust.

On April 24th 2013, just over a year since it was first reported, the Commerce Team published an update on the listings issues and WEB-4587, which reads:

For those of you who have had an incorrect image appearing on your listings–or have seen your image on someone else’s listings, we have come up with a supported process to get these listings cleaned up.

Someone Else’s Image on My Listing
If you are seeing someone else’s image on your listing, you should be receiving an email with a link for you to go remove those images from your listings. These images will be returned to the listing we have identified as correct. Any listings not reviewed by May 15, 2013 will be unlisted until the Merchant has a chance to remove the image manually and reactivate the listing. We will provide a summarized list of these and notify all Merchants whose listings have been deactivated.

My Image on Someone Else’s Listing
If your image is appearing on another Merchant’s listing, the following will happen:

  1. The Merchant will be notified to review their listing and confirm that the image does not belong with their listing.
  2. The image will be returned to your listing. At this point, you will be able to review your updated listing here (link). This may occur after the review period for step 1 has already completed.

If the listing your image is appearing on is not reviewed in step 1, the listing will be unlisted to prevent your image from appearing on the incorrect listing.

We appreciate your help in getting this cleaned up.

So the good news is, there is actually movement on the matter. Admittedly, in reading the forum post, I cannot help but conjure a mental image of some poor sod (or three) at the Lab having been tasked with spending the last 12 months digging through the Marketplace and manually checking images against project descriptions / links – but movement is movement, and is, on the whole, to be welcomed.

There are some issues being reported with the process, however, as noted in the thread following the announcement. Some of these issues appear to be related to items which, in lieu of any communications from the Commerce Team, merchants opted to previously manually remove from their listings, and other appear to indicate that not all incorrect listing items have actually been captured by whatever process was used at the Lab. Others are reporting mixed outcomes simply as a result of following the given instructions.

It’s not clear how widespread issues are in following the instructions; certainly the problems being noted appear limited going on the amount of feedback on the thread. Not that this is any comfort to those affected, but it perhaps indicates that for most people who were blighted by the issue, things are now being put right.

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SL projects report week 17 (3): server, group bans and Oculus Rift

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 17

The scheduled server channel deployments took place as planned this week.

The SLS Main channel

As previously reported, this received the update package deployed to the three Release Candidate channels in week 16, primarily comprising the new server-side LSL Animation Override capabilities, complete with a fix for BUG 2164 – release notes

BlueSteel and LeTigre

Both of these channels received the first part of a new experience tools project – referred to as the “Experience Keys project” in the release notes.

Interestingly, the release notes refer to BlueSteel and LeTigre receiving server release 13.04.19.274370; however, the viewer reports both of the channels running 13.04.05.273550. I contacted Maestro on this, who replied, “There was an error during the roll, so a slightly older version (which doesn’t include the changes from this week’s main channel update) was deployed.”

Not too much is known about the new Experience Keys project, although the emphasis on “new” indicates this is more than just a deployment of the outstanding permissions system for the current advanced creation / experience tools, and speculation has been running high. At the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday 23rd April, Simon Linden indicated he was unsure as to what he could / could not say on the matter (particularly as it appeared the documentation was still being written-up).

Commenting on the Bluesteel / LeTigre deployment at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday 25th April, Maestro Linden was also somewhat circumspect on the matter, commenting, “The team doesn’t want to announce the features yet, so I can’t give many details … some other parts need to be released for the new features to be usable. So ideally, nothing visible should change there.”

The reference to “some other parts” which need to be released for these new features may include a viewer update. Whether such an update will appear ahead of or behind the materials capabilities (still currently in a project viewer) is unclear at this point in time.

Magnum

Magnum received additional LSL support for new HTTP contents types, as document in the release notes. It also received a change to how certain message types are handled by the server, which Maestro described thus:

There’s a change to make the server smarter about how it throttles certain messaging types to prevent certain types of ‘DoS’ attacks, where a ‘bad’ object could prevent your avatar from getting llDialog notifications from other objects. All objects owned by UserA share the same throttle for sending llDialog() messages to UserB, but objects owned by anybody else would have a separate throttle pool.

This should hopefully reduce the incidences of iiDialog being used in spamming attacks which can result in the viewer either being severely slowed down or crashing altogether.

SL Viewer

The beta viewer gained a further release (3.5.1.274558) which reached public availability on April 24th, containing further CHUI and SSB/A dixes and updates, as detailed in the release notes. The development viewer also received a further release (3.5.2.27469) which also gained public availability on April 24th.

Group Bans

Baker Linden: Group Ban work coming, just not quite yet
Baker Linden: Group Ban work coming, just not quite yet

Baker Linden has started working on an update to the code for managing groups which will allow group owners / moderators to ban users who create problems (e.g. those who spam groups, people who are persistently abusive in group chat, etc.). This work is in response to JIRA VWR-29337. In my last report on this, Baker has written-up the documentation for the work and was having some other Lindens cast an eye over it.

Attending the Server Beta meeting on Thursday April 25th, Baker provided an update on his activities. “I’m still working on group bans, but I decided to fix a couple small bugs first. They both relate to searching people using the choose resident floater. They’re in the system where I’ll be adding group ban stuff, and now that I can test the changes, I can get them pushed to an RC. However, he did go on to say, “It’s going to be a while before Group ban stuff is ready.”

Second Life and Oculus Rift

There has been considerable interest in the Oculus Rift headset and its potential for use within Second Life, as reported back in week 14 and more recently. Jon Brouchoud in particular blogged on why SL would be a “killer app” for the headset, and a video I featured back in week 16 has also appeared on numerous SL blogs (hardly surprising, given it has pretty much gone viral where the Oculus Rift is concerned 🙂 ).

On Wednesday April 24th, Hamlet Au covered the fact that the Lab is already looking to integrate the headset into Second Life, and have given official confirmation, with company spokesman Peter Gray (Pete Linden) quoted as saying, “We plan to strongly support Oculus Rift. That means code, client, and server-side, to make the Oculus Rift experience excellent in Second Life.”

Continue reading “SL projects report week 17 (3): server, group bans and Oculus Rift” →

SL project reports week 17 (2): COF corruption and SSB/A

Posted on by Inara Pey

At the Open-source Dev meeting on Wednesday April 25th, Whirly Fizzle raised a concern on the status of JIRA SVC-7653, which relates to Current Outfit Folder (COF) corruptions leading to an avatar being unable to log-in to Second Life which may have an impact on the forthcoming Server-side Baking / Appearance switch-over.

The problem was first publicly reported by AngusGraham Ceawlin in February 2012, and at the time became of the focus of a campaign to Free Angus. After a total of some 63 days unable to log-in and with the (particular) support of Whirly herself and Nicky Dasmijn, Paspund Resident and Izzy Linden, Agnus was indeed freed. However the problem has become a matter of concern again because SVC-7653 remains marked as “unresolved”, and a workaround developed for it looks set to be “broken” when SSB/A goes live.

The "Free Angus campaign poster" produced by Sparkles Alchemi and used in a number of blog posts in early 2012 to highlight Angus' situation
The “Free Angus campaign poster” produced by Sparkles Alchemi and used in a number of blog posts in early 2012 to highlight Angus’ situation

The COF Corruption Issue

When this particular issue occurs, the user has no clear indication that there has been an inventory corruption specific to the Current Outfit Folder. There are only tell-tale clues, which Whirly Fizzle documented (on behalf of Kitty Barnett) as being:

  • Only one account is affected
  • A crash or timeout disconnect will occur at log-in, usually around “Downloading clothing…”
  • The affected account will crash/disconnect on any V3-based viewer or a viewer that uses COF
  • A clean install, cache clear, replacing outfit on a non-COF viewer will not fix the problem
  • The associated viewer logs will usually show:

INFO: newview/llappearancemgr.cpp(1998):LLAppearanceMgr::updateAppearanceFromCOF : starting

Generally (but not always) followed by numerous warnings:

WARNING: newview/llappearancemgr.cpp(2891) : WearablesOrderComparator::operator(): Warning # 0: either item1 or item2 is NULL

Followed by a crash or a timeout.

The Workaround

While LL’s support staff do have scripts to deal with various inventory corruptions and issues, under current rules, they will only run these scripts for Premium accounts. While it may be possible to get further assistance from the Lab if you’re not a Premium account holder, it is certainly going to take a good deal longer to gain assistance. As a result, Kitty Barnett developed a workaround for non-Premium members, which Whirly included in her comments on SVC-7653:

  • Use a viewer which does not have COF support and log-in to SL. Currently, Imprudence is possibly the most easily obtainable such viewer
  • Replace outfit with a Library avatar. Thus must be a complete outfit change (every layer / attachment)
  • Log out of the viewer
  • Launch a TPV which uses the VerifyInitialWearables debug setting (such as Catznip, Exodus, or Firestorm – note that the official viewer does not have this setting)
  • At the log-in splash screen:
    • Go to the top menu bar and select Me/Viewer > Preferences > Advanced and tick Show Advanced Menu
    • From the top menu bar, go to Debug > Debug settings > VerifyInitialWearables and set it to TRUE
  • Login to SL.

This should result in a message being sent to the server by the viewer using the VerifyInitialWearables which will result in the COF corruption being “fixed” and the avatar being able to log-in successfully to SL. A change of outfit should then verify that all is well.

The Workaround and SSB

Tests carried out by TPV developers have shown that the VerifyInitialWearables message sent by the viewer is ignored by the SSB/A servers. This has resulted in concern that unless the Lab have developed a resolution for this issue,  anyone encountering it once SSB/A is “live” will not be able to utilise the documented workaround, and they’ll effectively be unable to log-in to Second Life unless they are a Premium member (or upgrade).

The matter has apparently been brought to the attention of the SSB/A team (led by Nyx Linden), who have been engaged in a wide range of inventory updates and associated work, “More than they hoped would be needed,” as Oz linden put it at the Open-source Dev meeting. But whether or not their work extends to fixing this particular problem is unclear. SVC-7653 remains “unresolved” but inactive – so it is perhaps possible a fix has been developed internally by the Lab without SVC-7653 being updated. However, until greater clarification is given, this is likely to be a subject of note at User Group meetings which deal with SSB/A matters.

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