User:Andrew Linden/Office Hours/2009 01 13

Transcript of Andrew Linden's office hours:

[11:01]	Helena Lycia:	Hiya
[11:01]	Arawn Spitteler:	Hiya'll
[11:02]	Kitto Flora:	Hello hello hello
[11:02]	Andrew Linden:	Hello
[11:02]	Latif Khalifa:	hey :)
[11:02]	Arawn Spitteler wonders if he spelled that correctly.
[11:02]	Arawn Spitteler:	Hey, Rex, ever hear of Sihkism?
[11:03]	Rex Cronon:	hi arawn, no i haven't
[11:03]	Rex Cronon:	hi everybody
[11:03]	Andrew Linden:	Alright, lessee if I have any announcements...
[11:03]	Rex Cronon:	hmm
[11:03]	Andrew Linden:	I should have read that release update email before this meeting...
[11:03]	Arawn Spitteler:	They wear turbines, because they don't cut their hair. I notice, your turbine eventually rezzes a witches cap shape.
[11:03]	Rex Cronon:	lol
[11:04]	Simon Linden:	Gotta wait for everyone to rez BEFORE sitting :)
[11:04]	Arawn Spitteler whispers: We can Whisper, now, but I don't think it has a keystroke.
[11:04]	Rex Cronon:	right simo:)
[11:05]	Andrew Linden:	Ok so it looks like, barring any emergencies discovered in the final QA pass...
[11:05]	Andrew Linden:	another server-1.25 attempt will happen this week
[11:05]	Helena Lycia:	Uh oh!
[11:05]	Arawn Spitteler wonders if QA has time to dscover much
[11:06]	Kitto Flora:	Rolling rolling rolling...
[11:06]	Latif Khalifa:	when are the backend servers going to be updated to 1.25?
[11:06]	Andrew Linden:	first pilot regions update on 15th, but there are some internal updates happening on the 14th
[11:06]	Andrew Linden:	so some backend servers updated on the 14th Latif
[11:06]	Latif Khalifa:	so tomorrow we see if "missing name" is fixed :)
[11:06]	Arawn Spitteler wonders if 1.25 will be out before 1.26
[11:06]	Andrew Linden:	those are target dates
[11:07]	Rex Cronon:	lol. arawn, u mean turbans?
[11:07]	Andrew Linden:	Heh, I thought he was talking about jet turbins
[11:07]	Arawn Spitteler:	Yeah, your witch's Cap looks like a turban, until rezzed.
[11:08]	Arawn Spitteler:	Something that goes round and round.
[11:08]	Rex Cronon:	that is what i thougth at frist too:)
[11:08]	Helena Lycia:	I think it would be cool if Sikhs wore turnibes IRL
[11:08]	Arawn Spitteler'd rather not stick his head into a jet turbine, but hates haircuts in general.
[11:08]	Andrew Linden:	Kitto, I did a little bit of work on your missing train cars problem
[11:08]	Rex Cronon:	lol
[11:08]	Kitto Flora:	Ah And ?
[11:09]	Andrew Linden:	I don't quite know what exactly is happening, but I've narrowed it down to either:
[11:09]	Andrew Linden:	the simulator thinks it is too far underground
[11:11]	Andrew Linden:	hrm... on second thought
[11:11]	Andrew Linden:	I'm not sure what the other possibility is. The code right around that spot has changed in the branch I was looking at (maint-server-6)
[11:12]	Arawn Spitteler:	I've seen Volume Detect fall off world, when physical.
[11:12]	Andrew Linden:	I'm going to have to look more carefully in the server-1.24 stuff
[11:12]	Kitto Flora:	OK
[11:12]	Andrew Linden:	however, I couldn't find any logs about your lost objects
[11:12]	Andrew Linden:	so whatever path it is falling into is not logged
[11:12]	Kitto Flora:	OH :(
[11:13]	Kitto Flora:	Nether sim?
[11:13]	Kitto Flora:	Neither?
[11:13]	Andrew Linden:	yes, neither sim
[11:13]	Andrew Linden:	kitto, you get a return message
[11:13]	Arawn Spitteler imagines a pile of Kitto Rail Cars, and laundered socks.
[11:13]	Andrew Linden:	and when that happens you do get something returned to your Lost and Found
[11:13]	Kitto Flora:	No message from the car at all
[11:13]	Andrew Linden:	however there is another item that is silently missing?
[11:13]	Kitto Flora:	Never arrives in L&F
[11:13]	Kitto Flora:	Its 'silent'
[11:14]	Kitto Flora:	Another item...
[11:14]	Kitto Flora:	I am suspect that the boat may go silently missing
[11:14]	Arawn Spitteler:	Sounds like it's going somewhere, that's nowhere. Being received by a non-existence, there's no record of it's dissappearence.
[11:14]	Kitto Flora:	If so thats since it was converted to MONO
[11:14]	Kitto Flora:	The railcar has been MONO all along
[11:14]	Andrew Linden:	the silent lost event is always associated with something else that does get returned to inventory kitto?
[11:15]	Kitto Flora:	No
[11:15]	Kitto Flora:	Most often when I discover that a railcar has gone mission - usually overnight, then theres nothing in my L&F
[11:15]	Kitto Flora:	AFAIK nothing else went missing
[11:16]	Andrew Linden:	Ok, it silently goes missing, no notice.
[11:16]	Kitto Flora:	Yes
[11:16]	Kitto Flora:	(and that is the bad thing)
[11:16]	Andrew Linden:	One of your reports had a "such and such has been returned to you" comment in it
[11:16]	Kitto Flora:	Which number notecard?
[11:16]	Andrew Linden:	The one I did the most work on... #4 I think.
[11:17]	Kitto Flora readis it
[11:17]	Andrew Linden:	yes, #4
[11:17]	Kitto Flora:	Ah yes
[11:17]	Andrew Linden:	I see, "About the same time..." probably unrelated
[11:17]	Andrew Linden:	.
[11:18]	Kitto Flora:	In that instance (only so far) I observed at around the same time that the Boat had 'gone offworld' *BUT* it had correctly been reeturned to L&F
[11:18]	Andrew Linden:	Ok, I saw a path where something could be silently lost -- if the object had been rezzed via a script + some other logic that I don't remember.
[11:18]	Kitto Flora:	Well it *may* indicare sever lag in comms with the destination Sim
[11:18]	Andrew Linden:	Kitto, is this car generated by some rezzer?
[11:18]	Kitto Flora:	Yes
[11:19]	Kitto Flora:	Car and boat are generated by a rezzer
[11:19]	Andrew Linden:	Ok, I'll dig into that theory more later.
[11:19]	Kitto Flora:	I am using rezzers more and more - infact exclusivly now, for expensive objects
[11:19]	Andrew Linden:	Ok.
[11:19]	Kitto Flora:	The rezzer is static - harder to 'loose'
[11:20]	Helena Lycia:	Eep, I hope it doesn't affect non-physical stuff, There are whole sims built almost entirely with rezzers where I live
[11:20]	Kitto Flora:	Comare to steam engines - dynamic.. and no-copy - easier to loose
[11:20]	Andrew Linden:	Other stuff... we're embarking on a little bug fixing project with more devs than usual.
[11:20]	Andrew Linden:	It started yesterday afternoon... should go for a week or two.
[11:20]	Kitto Flora:	What ya gonna fix?
[11:21]	Andrew Linden:	We'll see how that turns out. I'm going to try to fix a few myself, despite all the other things I've got to keep track of.
[11:21]	Andrew Linden:	I think that is all that was on my agenda.
[11:21]	Andrew Linden:	The topic of conversation is open.
[11:22]	Kitto Flora:	What about fixing sim crossing? Is that still on the list?
[11:22]	Andrew Linden:	Kitto, there are a number of region-crossing bugs.
[11:22]	Simon Linden:	FWIW I'm going to be focusing on textures for that project
[11:22]	Simon Linden:	I do have another region-crossing bug to look at as well
[11:22]	Andrew Linden:	We aren't going to focus on that in this project, but some of those bugs might be tackled.
[11:22]	Simon Linden:	... it sounds similar to yours, Kitto
[11:23]	Andrew Linden:	I'm starting off by letting the various LL dev's pick their own bugs from the pile.
[11:23]	Andrew Linden:	They are able to sort by priority, category, and some other things.
[11:23]	Kitto Flora:	The *BIG* problem with region crossing is actually the lag. Its not really a bug, just really poor performance
[11:24]	Latif Khalifa:	I have a question about your ability to look into running script state. I have a very hard to reproduce problem where script would "forget" it has PERMISSION_DEBIT. I did not file JIRA because it happens so rarely and without any apparent cause. I was wondering if you guys are able to tell something from a running sim state?
[11:24]	Andrew Linden:	Latif, I think our tools there are not very good.
[11:24]	Arawn Spitteler:	The loss of vehicle status is a bug, that shuld be fixed, but Region Crossings in general were always thought to be the perpetual motion device of SL
[11:24]	Helena Lycia:	Is anyone considering using predictive handover... accessing an AV's tragectory to start sending info to the next sim earlier?
[11:25]	Andrew Linden:	We don't have much insight into the current state of a script during any particular runtime moment.
[11:25]	Andrew Linden:	There is some analysis that can be done on a crash (core-dump).
[11:25]	Kitto Flora:	'Insight' - the name of the graphical version of gdb?
[11:25]	Andrew Linden:	Helena, I've considered the predictive handover, yes.
[11:25]	Latif Khalifa:	my script isn't doing anything realy, waiting for money()... just that permission flags seem to reset randomly and very infrequently.
[11:26]	Andrew Linden:	But have not yet tackled it.
[11:26]	Arawn Spitteler:	Does Havok use predictive spaces?
[11:26]	Helena Lycia:	Cool, as long as it's something to be looked at, that's good
[11:26]	Arawn Spitteler:	I think a timer could check perms, on occassion.
[11:26]	Andrew Linden:	Havok only uses prediction in its integration step
[11:26]	Arawn Spitteler:	Integration?
[11:26]	Andrew Linden:	but the "prediction" is that it steps forward and checks to see if something bad happened
[11:27]	Andrew Linden:	it then tries to roll partially back in some cases
[11:27]	Latif Khalifa:	Arawan, yes but what to do when I detect missing PERMISSION_DEBIT, cannot request it again if I am offline for days
[11:27]	Arawn Spitteler:	Ah, I'd use a predictive volume, to see if any collisions are immanent, or if the object could be smoothed on viewer side.
[11:27]	Andrew Linden:	in this case "integration" means computing the next location (using current position, velocity, and acceleation)
[11:28]	Kitto Flora:	Thats an odd problem Latif. I have built a couple of fancy vendors, they run many months, I have never seen them fail to maintain PERMISSION_DEBIT
[11:28]	Andrew Linden:	PERMISSION_DEBIT is the permission to give money?
[11:29]	Latif Khalifa:	yes
[11:29]	Kitto Flora:	Take and give
[11:29]	Arawn Spitteler:	So, a predictive solid could be extended into the neighboring sim? It's a matter of sims being on the interest lists of neighboring sims.
[11:29]	Andrew Linden:	Latif, does your script have state changes?
[11:29]	Latif Khalifa:	no, just give... you can take without
[11:30]	Kitto Flora:	DEBIT is needed to give change, or pass a cut on to another Av?
[11:30]	Latif Khalifa:	Andrew, it originally had, I rewrote it to be all on one state now. Seem that frequency of problems is lower, but just the other day I had several panels fail for me
[11:30]	Andrew Linden:	Latif, is this new in MONO?
[11:30]	Latif Khalifa:	Kitto, exactly, my script is simple profit sharing thingie
[11:30]	Latif Khalifa:	Andrew, nope
[11:30]	Latif Khalifa:	having problems on and off for a year
[11:30]	Andrew Linden:	Latif, are your scripts using MONO or the legacy script engine (is that still available for new scripts?) ?
[11:31]	Multi-vendor 1:	Starting up...
[11:31]	Latif Khalifa:	Andrew, both... recompiling to mono did not fix the problem that originally started in the legacy LSL executor
[11:31]	Andrew Linden:	ok hrm...
[11:32]	Andrew Linden:	Latif, I don't have any theories right now about why that would happen
[11:32]	Andrew Linden:	and this is the first I've heard of that problem
[11:32]	Andrew Linden:	If I were working on that problem I'd want to examine the scripts
[11:32]	Kitto Flora gives Latif a copy of Muti vendor script that works for him
[11:33]	Andrew Linden:	is the script simple enough that youd could post a sanitized reproducible example on a public jira?
[11:33]	Arawn Spitteler:	Alternatively, it could be called a security isue.
[11:33]	Latif Khalifa:	hm, what's simple? its about 250 lines of code, but most of it is parsing notecard config
[11:34]	Andrew Linden:	"simple" in that you wouldn't mind others seeing the script, I guess.
[11:34]	Latif Khalifa:	i don't mind it at all
[11:34]	Latif Khalifa:	it can be open source
[11:35]	Kitto Flora:	The one I use is open source. Nothing much special about such scripts
[11:35]	Andrew Linden:	Ok, that makes it easier.
[11:35]	Latif Khalifa:	Kitto, mine is really simple script that I put in 1 prim panel that sells objects. It reads notecard with specificatin of % split and then when it recives money() event it passes along the cut to my partners.
[11:36]	Andrew Linden:	so this is what I would suggest Latif: file a public jira bug about it, paste the script, or a cleaned one that lacks any details you might want private, in the comments
[11:36]	Andrew Linden:	some others may say they also see the problem
[11:36]	Andrew Linden:	but that will at least put it on our radar
[11:36]	Latif Khalifa:	ok i will do that
[11:37]	Andrew Linden:	You can send me an IM with the jira number when you've filed it
[11:37]	Kitto Flora:	I have seen two interesting strange things this morning: New to me - maybe interesting, possibly some rare bug:
[11:37]	Latif Khalifa:	trouble is I have 200 of thesre panels, and failuure rate is 2-3 per quarter
[11:37]	Andrew Linden:	I might be able to look at it, but no gaurantees
[11:37]	Latif Khalifa:	sooo rare and difficult to reproduce
[11:37]	Andrew Linden:	but another LL dev may also be able to look at it
[11:38]	Arawn Spitteler:	Would there be a log of perm changes?
[11:38]	Andrew Linden:	it helps to have it entered into the system
[11:38]	Latif Khalifa:	nope, just request permission_debit on entry
[11:38]	Kitto Flora:	1) In the client the Stats Panel Simulator setion remains *empty* until one enables and opens the 'Advanced' debug option in menu
[11:38]	Andrew Linden:	Arawn, most perm chagnes are not logged
[11:38]	Andrew Linden:	we can't log everything or we drown in logs
[11:39]	Arawn Spitteler:	I wonder if objects could carry their own edit logs.
[11:40]	Kitto Flora:	2) I visited a private island that had Fly, Rez and Scripts all disabled, BUT when you look in the World/Land/Estate panel settings they are all *enabled* !
[11:40]	Arawn Spitteler:	Estate or Parcel?
[11:40]	Kitto Flora:	The owner reset the sim and then all three became enabled for real. (or for virtual?)
[11:41]	Kitto Flora:	Both
[11:41]	Arawn Spitteler:	Ghosted Perms?
[11:41]	Kitto Flora:	Seems so
[11:41]	Arawn Spitteler:	Well, we now have a diagnosis for it.
[11:41]	Andrew Linden:	hrm... kitto that sounds like bug
[11:42]	Andrew Linden:	the stuff was disabled at the estate/region level, not the parcel ?
[11:42]	Kitto Flora:	No
[11:42]	Kitto Flora:	The actual sitauation in the Region was that all three were disabled
[11:43]	Kitto Flora:	In the top of the client it showed all three as disabled,
[11:43]	Kitto Flora:	The noob owner was complaining that he could not turn them on
[11:43]	Kitto Flora:	When I looked in World/Region and /about land... panels
[11:43]	Kitto Flora:	all three were *enabled*
[11:44]	Kitto Flora:	So the status panes were at odds with what the regin was really doing
[11:44]	Kitto Flora:	A region Restart fixed it
[11:44]	Andrew Linden:	Right. Did the estate owner have a way to reproduce it?
[11:44]	Kitto Flora:	Not taht I know of Andrew
[11:44]	Andrew Linden:	Or was it not reproducible when the region restarted. Hrm... ok.
[11:44]	Kitto Flora:	It was a Open Space sim
[11:44]	Kitto Flora:	New owner
[11:45]	Kitto Flora:	(ignorant :)
[11:45]	Kitto Flora:	And 3 hours ago...
[11:45]	Andrew Linden:	ok, well I'll wait for that one in jira. I don't have many theories as to how that could happen.
[11:45]	Kitto Flora:	OK
[11:46]	Andrew Linden:	that is, surely a bug, but I can't think of where in the code to look first.
[11:46]	Kitto Flora:	If someone else reports the same thing, it worth looking into
[11:46]	Andrew Linden:	yup
[11:46]	Arawn Spitteler:	Maybe flag the restart channel somehow?
[11:47]	Andrew Linden:	Simon, didn't we pull the "scripts are disabled" check further out of the script engine a while ago?
[11:47]	Andrew Linden:	such that it was checked *before* the script engine started walking all the scripts?
[11:47]	Simon Linden:	Hmm, I don't remember that change
[11:48]	Kitto Flora:	If Simon is going to look at Texture bugs - fixing the one where the last frame of the texture is very slow to arrive would be a good one. Would improve the look of the place a lot
[11:48]	Andrew Linden:	Ok, my memory on that is fuzzy. I might be misremembering something.
[11:48]	Latif Khalifa:	btw. new mono compiler server side seems to be very processor have, if i start 10 simultaneous compilations time dilation drops below 0.5 (not that this happens very often)
[11:48]	Latif Khalifa:	heavy*
[11:49]	Andrew Linden:	Isn't that part of what you're working on Simon? That last texture frame?
[11:49]	Simon Linden:	Yes, there's a fix for that in our merge pipeline. The server isn't sending enough data to get the proper detail level of the texture
[11:49]	Kitto Flora:	Goody!
[11:49]	Andrew Linden:	Oh really Latif. Hrm... I'll ask babbage about the cost of compiling.
[11:50]	Kitto Flora:	It is high - in mono
[11:50]	Kitto Flora:	(My observation)
[11:50]	KFengine2-5 14.2.0M Black whispers: Reading card, please WAIT....
[11:50]	KFengine2-5 14.2.0M Black whispers: Set to channel 1
[11:50]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M whispers: No nearby track!
[11:50]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M whispers: Home set
[11:50]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M Black whispers: Read card
[11:50]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M Black whispers: Configured
[11:51]	Andrew Linden:	Oh right, one announcement I forgot to mention... I've now got a meeting right after this one on Tuesdays.
[11:51]	Simon Linden:	That should be a pretty quick blip, however. There would be a bunch of data moved around, but I don't know why it should last more than a second or two
[11:51]	Andrew Linden:	So I'm going to have to leave at 12:00 noon Pacific
[11:51]	Kitto Flora:	Lookit dip?
[11:51]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M Black whispers: Reading card, please WAIT....
[11:51]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M Black whispers: Reading card, please WAIT....
[11:51]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M Black whispers: Reading card, please WAIT....
[11:51]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M Black whispers: Reading card, please WAIT....
[11:51]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M Black whispers: Set to channel 1
[11:51]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M whispers: Reading card, please WAIT....
[11:51]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M whispers: No nearby track!
[11:51]	KFengine2-1 14.2.0M whispers: Home set
[11:52]	Kitto Flora kills it
[11:52]	Kitto Flora:	Possible new griefer tool?
[11:53]	Rex Cronon:	spam chat? if you mute owner, is useless:)
[11:53]	Latif Khalifa:	look at time dilation now
[11:53]	Kitto Flora:	Something else going on in sim?
[11:53]	Kitto Flora:	Maybe that test was tainted
[11:53]	Andrew Linden:	What is loading the simulator? A script compile generator?
[11:53]	Kitto Flora:	I started a recompile of that steam engine
[11:53]	Latif Khalifa:	Andew, I recompiled scripts to mone in these 8 objects
[11:53]	Kitto Flora:	Then killed it
[11:54]	Kitto Flora:	Ah - more tests :)
[11:54]	Kitto Flora:	Yeah - this is a way for a griefer to lag a sim
[11:54]	MLPV2.4d whispers:	MLPV2.4d: READY
[11:55]	Rex Cronon:	if compiling a script cause so much lag, than things are bad:(
[11:55]	Latif Khalifa:	about 8 simultanous recompiles brings down time dilation to 0.2
[11:56]	Kitto Flora:	Maybe needs better scheduling
[11:56]	Andrew Linden:	how are you triggering the recompiles? manually or scripted?
[11:56]	Kitto Flora:	Is script compile integrated with sim, or a separate process?
[11:56]	Latif Khalifa:	manually
[11:56]	Latif Khalifa:	one by one though, becauuse if you select more than one object, the client will serialize the request
[11:57]	Andrew Linden:	Kitto, I'm not sure where the script compile happens now.
[11:57]	Andrew Linden:	I'll have to ask Babbage Linden.
[11:57]	Kitto Flora:	If its integrated, needs some kinda scheduler. If its separate, maybe use 'nice'
[11:57]	Kitto Flora:	YEah. Babbage stuff :)
[11:57]	Simon Linden:	It happens in the asset upload mechanism ... I ran into that code while working on textures
[11:58]	Arawn Spitteler:	Compile time s an issue, in Mono, and I've heard requests for a client side Syntax Check
[11:58]	Andrew Linden:	Simon, does the local sim node do the asset_upload checks?
[11:58]	Simon Linden:	That's almost all outside the simulator, however, so it may be the compiler is a resource hog
[11:58]	Simon Linden:	yes
[11:59]	Andrew Linden:	ok, so the asset_upload needs a queue
[11:59]	Kitto Flora:	Andrew You should come ride the Big Steam Engine + CArriage on the SLRR tracks across the northern continent. You will see how Sim Boundary crossing problem affects resident experience :)
[11:59]	Latif Khalifa:	haha
[11:59]	Andrew Linden:	Yes I should. Not today, but maybe soon.
[12:00]	Kitto Flora:	2-vehicle serial crossing, collision avoidence scripting
[12:00]	Andrew Linden:	I've got to run now. I have another meeting to attend.
[12:00]	Kitto Flora:	Its reliable. but UGLEEEE :)
[12:00]	Rex Cronon:	bye andrew
[12:00]	Kitto Flora:	Lunchtime!
[12:00]	Latif Khalifa:	thank you for your time Andrew
[12:00]	Kitto Flora:	Byebye all
[12:00]	Rex Cronon:	bye everybody
[12:00]	Simon Linden:	I have to attend the same one ... thanks everyone for coming
[12:00]	Helena Lycia:	Take care