Bug Reporting 101

or, 'How to report a bug without really trying'!

Check the Release Notes (located in the Second Life directory on your computer) or the Beta Release Notes page.

Why can't I set my land to sell for L$0 to anyone?! These aren't bugs, they are features! Check this page next to be sure you're dealing with a bug, and not something we intentionally changed.

Check your driver versions.

A lot of weird things can happen when your video drivers are out of date. Second Life officially supports NVIDIA and ATI chipsets. Intel Extreme Graphics is not officially supported, but may work. You can find your current OpenGL driver version in Help > About Second Life. Look for 'OpenGL Version'. Its a good idea to update your drivers whenever we update Second Life. Omega Drivers http://www.omegadrivers.net/ is a great place to find drivers for video cards. You can also check the NVIDIA official site http://www.nvidia.com or the ATI official site http://www.ati.com. If you have a laptop or other integrated video chipset you may need to consult the vendor's website for drivers, If your vendor doesnt provide upto date drivers then you should try the Omega Drivers.

Use common sense with possible exploits.

We takes possible exploits very seriously. Instead of telling everyone about a possible exploit in the forums or inworld, hunt down an officer of Bug Hunters and tell them about the bug. Exploits are bugs that could be used to get an advantage over others, unauthorized access to scripts, unauthorized copying, transferring or modifying of objects that you didn't create (also called 'permissions' bugs) and other bugs that could potentially cause a comprimise of the grid or a resident's privacy. Please also report the bug using the inworld Tools > Report Bug feature in addition to hunting down a Linden so we have it documented internally.

Write the steps thoughtfully.

"I crash when I upload something" is not a good reproducible issue. List the steps that you take one by one, such as ...

Bug Reporting 101

Contents