Bug Tracker/FAQ

Tip: This FAQ gets into technical details for those who are interested. If that's not your kind of thing, go back to the main Issue Tracker page.

What is the difference between Bugs & New Features?

• A bug means something does not work correctly compared to the way it was designed or should be expected to.
• You may wish to look through Bug Reporting 101 for things to try before submitting a bug.
• A new feature is something that Second Life does not do already, but you think it would be a great idea or improvement if it could in the future.
• You can propose new features through JIRA and allow other Residents to comment, make more suggestions, and add Votes for it!

What is my User profile? Why can't I edit my User profile?

• Each JIRA user has a profile. The profile consists of your Username (your SL name), Fullname (in our case, also your SL name), and all of the JIRA groups you belong to. For most people, this means "jira-users."

• The email address associated with your account shall remain anonymous to other users. The address is not visible or configurable at this time. Direct import of your email address from Second Life's database is currently disabled.

• The JIRA profile is not editable, because allowing changes would introduce conflicts with your Second Life account. If you wish to edit account information such as your email address, please login to the account management page at secondlife.com.

Can I customize any preferences in the Issue Tracker?

• If you want to show more issues per page, or change the language that JIRA is displayed in, Update User Preferences after logging in.

What if English isn't my first language and the Issue Tracker is too hard to understand?

The Issue Tracker itself has an option to change its language. What you want to do is:

• Login to jira.secondlife.com
• Click “Profile” near the upper-right.
• Click “Edit Preferences” in the left sidebar.
• Change “Locale” from “English” to your preferred language. See a picture

Can I write my bug report in another language?

This is still a very new thing, and while we have a growing number of Lindens who are multilingual, to have your issue understood broadly by the release & engineering team of Linden Lab, please have a friend help you with an English translation.

What are Projects and Components

• Projects are used to categorize issues into logical groups. One big project is "VWR" -- that means our Second Life viewer, which is the software package you downlaod to use Second Life.
• Once you are reporting something inside a specific project, Components are used to specify which part of a system your issue affects. In other words, what is the area of the problem within a project.

Second Life Viewer (VWR)

Issues pertaining to the Second Life viewer are reported under this project. Examples:

• "My avatar clothing is all black after installing a video driver update" (Component = Avatar/Character)
• "Objects in my Inventory do not remain sorted in the correct order after logging out and back in again" (Component = Inventory)

Second Life Service (SVC)

Issues pertaining to the Second Life service are reported here. Examples:

• "Server performance decreases when several avatars teleport into the region at once" (Component = Performance and/or Teleport)
• "My scripted objects are not able to talk to the outside world after Second Life grid downtime" (Component = Scripts).

Second Life Website (WEB)

Issues pertaining to the Second Life website are in this project. Examples:

• "Wiki prevents login for users with a dash in their name" (Component = wiki.secondlife.com)
• "jira.secondlife.com always forces me to authenticate even if I save my login information" (Component = jira.secondlife.com).

Second Life Miscellaneous (MISC)

Any other type of issue should be reported in the MISC project. Example:

• "The TOS does not allow me to edit the viewer source code" (Component = Miscellaneous)

Security Issues -- What is the "SEC" Project?

The Security project in Jira is only accessible to be read by Linden employees. However, you can create a new report there, and the security team will get immediate notification. See security issues page for more information about submitting issues and collecting bounties for responsibly reporting valid security issues.

Who is WorkingOnIt Linden?

When an issue is being investigated internally by Linden Lab, it may be assigned to "WorkingOnIt Linden" to mark its status. This is a step closer to having your issue addressed, compared to when it is Unassigned to no-one.

Any Linden has access to the account. See User:WorkingOnIt Linden for details.

What's the difference between the "Fixed" and "Fix Pending" resolutions?

It's simple:

• "Fixed" means the fix is available in the a version of Second Life that you can download, right now.
• "Fix Pending" means the fix has been made within Linden Lab's code and has not been released publicly yet. It may need to undergo extra care, like quality assurance, or requires merging from a branch, before being available to you. Think of it as a "We're almost there... coming soon!" notice.

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

Often the Second Life software is behaving exactly as designed, but it can look wrong if you're not aware of the reasons behind the behavior. This status is used for such cases -- where what you saw happen was not a bug, but you are asking for a new behavior we never thought of yet.

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

• Reopen the issue (be sure to state the reason for your reopening in the comments)
• On the left-hand bar, click Edit. You MUST change the Issue Type field to "New Feature," and click Save.

How do I search through older bugs?

Read the Issue tracker/Searching page for more helpful hints.

I found a bug about the Issue Tracker itself!

When you found a bug or other problem (including feature request) on the way JIRA itself works, it is better to file it on the bug tracker run by Atlassian (the developer of JIRA software) for their product, not through Second Life's public version of JIRA. It is available on http://jira.atlassian.com

Lindens suggest you can also post a link to the issue you filed here if you do so.

How do I create a search for the issues I've voted on or am watching?

Out of the box, Atlassian provides a filter for viewing the issues you are watching and voted on. However these filters have limited functionality (i.e. you can sort the columns or add other filter criteria). You can create your own Watching or Voted filter by using the "View Watcher" and "View Voter" fields. By creating a filter using one of these fields populated with your Second Life account name, you can create a filter (and add any other criteria you'd like) that has the same features as other find issues results.