Bug Tracker/FAQ

This article provides further details on how to use the Bug Tracker.

What's the difference between bugs and new features?

• Bug - Something does not work correctly compared to the way it was designed or should be expected to.
• New Feature - Something that Second Life doesn't do, but you think it would be a great idea or improvement if it could.

How do I keep up with what's going on?

On the left of each issue is a Watch it link you can click. When the issue is updated, you'll get an email notification. You can also view Your Watches.

Check the Release Notes for what's new in Second Life. Release Notes highlight features and bug fixes, as well as known issues to be aware of. This context may help you understand whether a change was intentional.

Also, make sure your graphics drivers are updated. Many historical bugs have been fixed by newer drivers.

Our Bug Triagers review issues on a regular basis; feel free to join in! Our engineers may require additional information from the issue reporter or other contributors.

What are the behavior guidelines?

Jira is subject to the Community Participation Guidelines.

How do I search?

Do you want to find something specific in the Issue Tracker, or or scan to see if your bug's been reported by someone else?

Issue Tracker searching can be frustrating, but it gets easier if you know how to use search parameters.

Official Atlassian Instructions

• Atlassian's JIRA documentation on "Searching for Issues"

Quick JIRA Search How To

• think some words (at least 2; 3 or 4 can work better) which reasonably can be present in the hypothetical title of the JIRA you're looking for;
• write those words in the "Quick Search" form, which is in the upper-right corner of any JIRA page, adding a '+' before each word
• getting too many results? on the results page, look on the left side for the "Query" form. "Comments" and "Description" checkboxes are enabled by default. Disable "Comments" checkbox and try again. If you still get too many results, disable "Description" checkbox too.
• if you don't get any results, or results don't match what you're looking for, change your keywords and retry

Screencast

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What software powers Bug Tracker?

JIRA from Atlassian. For details, see the documentation. If you find a bug with JIRA itself, contact Atlassian.

How do I customize my settings?

• View your User Profile - Some details, like your Username and email address, are tied to your main Second Life info. If you want to change those, visit Your Dashboard.
• Edit Your Preferences - A few options can be customized. You can also change your language here.

Can I write my bug report in another language?

While we have a growing number of Lindens who are multilingual, to have your issue understood broadly by the Linden Lab's developers, please have a friend help you with an English translation.

What are projects and components?

• Projects are used to sort issues into sensible groups. One big project is "VWR" for our Second Life Viewer, the software package you download to use Second Life.
• Components are the specific area of a problem within a project.

More projects and components are added over time as needed.

Examples

• Second Life Viewer - VWR
  • Component = Avatar/Character - "My avatar clothing is all black after installing a video driver update"
  • Component = Inventory - "Objects in my inventory don't remain sorted in the correct order after relogging"
• Second Life Service - SVC
  • Component = Performance and/or Teleport - "Server performance decreases when several avatars teleport into the Region at once"
  • Component = Scripts - "My scripted objects are not able to talk to the outside world after Second Life Grid downtime"
• Second Life Website - WEB
  • Component = wiki.secondlife.com - "Wiki blocks login for Residents with a 'y' in their name"
  • Component = jira.secondlife.com. - "The Bug Tracker always forces me to authenticate, even if I save my login information"

What is the "SEC" project?

Redirecting to http://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/how-to-report-a-bug-r224/#Section__2

Issues pertaining to the security of Second Life should be sent to Linden Lab via special mechanism described below. Please help us keep Second Life secure by ensuring that possible security exploits aren't broadly advertised before a fix is available.

So just what constitutes a security issue? If an issue poses any of the following threats to Second Life, its Residents or content, then it is an exploit and should be reported:

• exposes real life Resident identity without consent
• destroys content
• permits unauthorized access to Second Life/Linden Lab resources
• compromises a client or server host subjecting it to remote control

When reporting an exploit, please provide as much detail as possible, Including the environment used (e.g. Windows XP Service Pack 2, Nvidia 6800 etc ) and the complete reproduction case. Linden Lab offers a L$10,000 bounty for each previously unknown exploit that can be verified. Please report issues as soon as they are discovered!

Filing issues

There are two ways to file security reports:

• In the SEC project on jira.secondlife.com (PREFERRED). It's VERY IMPORTANT that you file issues in the SEC project, which is the only project set up so that only the reporter and Linden Lab can view the issue.
• Via email: security@lindenlab.com

Warning: The SEC project (and security mailing list) is ONLY for reporting security exploits that might compromise a Residents identity or the Second Life Grid. All other requests including account issues and account security via this address will not be addressed.

For other issues:

• If you believe your account has been breached please attempt to change your password immediately and also contact support.
• If you are experiencing some other problem, please contact support.
• See Bug Tracker for information about filing non-security issues.

What do the different resolution statuses mean?

Here's how Linden Lab uses the workflow status and resolution field:

Awaiting Review

Initial state when an issue/ticket is created or when it is reopened closed state. All issues in in this state will be reviewed and triaged.

Been Triaged

This state indicates that the issue is being reviewed by Linden Lab.

Accepted

When an issue has been imported to an internal Linden Lab project, it will be marked as Accepted.

Needs More Info

The issue lacks actionable information. Add the info or it CAN'T be investigated.

Information Provided

The issue has been updated with the necessary information.

Closed

Resolution = Contact Support

The issue does NOT belong in the Bug Tracker, and needs to be handled through the Support Portal or Second Life Answers.

Resolution = Expected Behavior

This is NOT a bug and functions by design See Expected Behavior aka Not a Bug.

Resolution = Duplicate

There's another issue about the same problem.

Resolution = Unactionable

Problem described in the ticket is not in a form that action can be taken (i.e. it's too broad)

Resolution = Not Applicable

The Reporter has decided to close the issue.

Diagram of Workflow

Note:

• Diagram does not have all the transition arrows.

Why was my issue resolved with a status of "Expected Behavior"?

Often, the Second Life software is behaving exactly as designed, but it can seem wrong if you're not aware of reasons behind the behavior. "Expected Behavior" is used for such cases — where what you saw happen was not a bug, but you're asking for a new behavior we haven't thought of yet.

If you would like to push for a change in that behavior:

1. First search to make sure someone else hasn't already requested this feature!
   1. If it has already been requested, vote and add your comments to the issue.
2. Go to the issue's page and click Reopen Issue on the left. Be sure to state WHY in the comments.
3. Then, click Edit on the left, change the Issue Type to New Feature by moving it.
4. Go through the steps and click Move to confirm.

What do the different priority levels indicate?

• Showstopper - an issue that could (or did) cause disastrous consequences. For example critical loss of data, critical loss of system availability, critical loss of security, critical loss of safety.
• Severe - an issue that could (or did) cause very serious consequences. For example a function is severely broken, cannot be used and there is no workaround.
• Major - an issue that could (or did) cause significant consequences, but there is a workaround. For example: A function is badly broken but workaround exists.
• Minor (default) - an issue that could (or did) cause small or negligible consequences. Easy to recover or workaround. For example: misleading error messages, displaying output in a font or format other than what the resident desired.
• Trivial - an issue that can cause no negative consequences. Such defects normally produce no erroneous outputs. For example: simple typos in documentation, bad layout or mis-spelling on screen.

Who is WorkingOnIt Linden?

A group account used to mark status when an issue is being investigated internally by Linden Lab. This is more communicative than the issue being "Unassigned". Various Lindens can access the account.

How can my LSL code bypass the initial login check?

Add ?os_authType=none to the URL.

If you find XML to be easier to parse you can request JIRA to return XML document containing all the data about a specific issue. If for example we wanted to get the information about WEB-2771 we would use the following URL:

http://jira.secondlife.com/si/jira.issueviews:issue-xml/WEB-2771/WEB-2771.xml?os_authType=none