Mono/2008-02-29

[15:08] Periapse: So I'll just go ahead and start. Looks like just you two!
 [15:09] Periapse: Oh, wait, here comes Rex
 [15:09] Periapse: Hi, Rex
 [15:09] Siann Beck: Hey there Rex.
 [15:09] Rex Cronon: hi periapse
 [15:09] Rex Cronon: hi siann
 [15:09] Rex Cronon: hi avie
 [15:09] Rex Cronon: davie*
 [15:09] Periapse: So here's what's been going on in Monoland since last week
 [15:09] Rex Cronon: .
 [15:09] Davie Zinner: Hi Rex
 [15:10] Periapse: We did an update as you know, and it seems to have had some side effects...
 [15:10] Periapse: Because of compiler changes, pre-update bytecode will not run properly, and may crash the sim
 [15:11] Rex Cronon: maybe u should post a notice or something like that
 [15:11] Periapse: So old scripts will be very unstable. But if you recompile to Mono they should work again.
 [15:11] Periapse: We actually did, yesterday.
 [15:11] Siann Beck: It's in the blog.
 [15:11] Periapse: The announcement about the db refresh.
 [15:12] Rex Cronon: haven't looked at blog for almost 2 days
 [15:12] Siann Beck: But a group notice might not be a bad idea.
 [15:12] Periapse: But you see we thought that we had this problem addressed.
 [15:12] Periapse: Yesterday Babbage changed the key for Mono scripts.
 [15:13] Periapse: This is supposed to make the VM not even try to run old bytecode, but give you an error instead.
 [15:13] Siann Beck: Yes, I've seen that.
 [15:13] Periapse: However, Siann, it's possible that in your case, it's either not working, or the key mismatch error is itself crashing the sim
 [15:14] Siann Beck: OK.
 [15:14] Periapse: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/02/28/beta-preview-database-refresh-scheduled-for-monday-march-3-2008/
 [15:14] Siann Beck: Well, like I say, it's just that one object.
 [15:14] Periapse: That's the blog post.
 [15:14] Periapse: Right. Just that one object, maybe some kind of race condition on when it was compiled
 [15:14] Periapse: who knows
 [15:14] Siann Beck: But right now, absolutely nothing of mine is working under Mono, not even my simple little height detector.
 [15:15] Periapse: Have you recompiled?
 [15:15] Siann Beck: Yes.
 [15:15] Periapse: So if you have a simple repro, say for the height detector, JIRA it up.
 [15:15] Periapse: How does it fail?
 [15:15] Siann Beck: Here in Goguen I get a system error; in the other Mono sims I just get null results.
 [15:16] Height Detector MONO: is 0.000000 meters tall (0' 0.00"), including shoes.
 [15:16] Siann Beck: OK, now it's not giving the system error.
 [15:16] Siann Beck: But null results.
 [15:16] Periapse: Of course
 [15:16] Periapse: And if you recompile to LSL?
 [15:16] Height Detector MONO: is 0.000000 meters tall (0' 0.00"), including shoes.
 [15:16] Rex Cronon: wow. i am 2d now?
 [15:16] Height Detector MONO: Siann Beck is 1.800744 meters tall (5' 9.07"), including shoes.
 [15:17] Siann Beck: lol
 [15:17] Periapse: and then back to Mono?
 [15:17] Height Detector MONO: Rex Cronon is 1.950373 meters tall (6' 3.98"), including shoes.
 [15:17] Rex Cronon: works
 [15:17] Height Detector MONO: Periapse Linden is 1.885922 meters tall (6' 1.87"), including shoes.
 [15:17] Height Detector MONO: is 0.000000 meters tall (0' 0.00"), including shoes.
 [15:17] Height Detector MONO: is 0.000000 meters tall (0' 0.00"), including shoes.
 [15:18] Periapse: yuk. Yeah, I'll bet this is something with the value semantics changes.
 [15:18] Periapse: This was the major work that Babbage did for this version
 [15:19] Periapse: it's code that gets executed ubiquitously, so any problems with it could show up anywhere
 [15:19] Siann Beck: Right.
 [15:19] Periapse: We have so far had to re-open half of the tickets we thought were fixed.
 [15:19] Siann Beck: Hm.
 [15:19] Siann Beck: Have you seen SVC-1712? That's a very bizarre one.
 [15:20] Periapse: Naturally this is going to be highest priority for Babbage right now.
 [15:20] Periapse: I'm looking that one up right now
 [15:20] Periapse: Oh, yeah, Strife's crasher.
 [15:20] Siann Beck: Yeah.
 [15:21] Periapse: So I don't think this version is going to be around much longer.
 [15:21] Periapse: We will do an update as soon as we can.
 [15:21] Siann Beck: OK
 [15:21] Periapse: I don't think that rolling back is an option
 [15:21] Periapse: Given the finagling we've done with the keys, and the db refresh for Monday
 [15:22] Siann Beck: Rather pointless, anyway, since pretty much everything's been tested that can be under that one.
 [15:22] Rex Cronon: what happend with the keys?
 [15:22] Periapse: Speaking of which, I should make sure you all know the implications of that db refresh
 [15:23] Periapse: Rex -- we changed the key for valid Mono bytecode to prevent old bytecode messing up the VM
 [15:23] Periapse: It's in the blog post I linked earlier
 [15:23] Rex Cronon: ok. for a sec i thought u were talking about all the keys in the db:)
 [15:23] Periapse: oh, sorry, no
 [15:23] Periapse: lol
 [15:24] Periapse: Now the db refresh on Monday is for this whole grid.
 [15:24] Periapse: Has nothing to do with simulator or client
 [15:24] Periapse: We pull all user data and inventory over from the Main Grid
 [15:25] Periapse: This means that accounts created since the last time of a refresh, i.e. people who can't currently log on to this grid, will be able to.
 [15:26] Periapse: It also means that your current inventory on this grid will be wiped, and replaced with a snapshot of your main grid inventory
 [15:26] Periapse: So if there are any scripts that you *developed* here (and don't have in inventory on the main grid) you will need to back them up offline
 [15:26] Periapse: with a cut/paste to a file.
 [15:27] Siann Beck: I do all my coding outwindow anyway, and c/p here.
 [15:27] Rex Cronon: the cut/past has become standard procedure for me
 [15:27] Periapse: It also means that things that you have developed on the main grid and have not seen here yet will now be accessible
 [15:27] Siann Beck: Yay!
 [15:27] Siann Beck: And if there's anything over there you want here, make sure it's in your inventory there.
 [15:27] Periapse: I have this new pair of shoes that I can't wait to get over here :-D
 [15:28] Siann Beck: lol
 [15:28] Rex Cronon: unless u plan to script them, u should be ok
 [15:28] Periapse: lol
 [15:28] Siann Beck: I changed my pw a few weeks ago, and it's been a PITB switching back and forth :)
 [15:29] Periapse: Right! That's something else I didnt' think of.
 [15:29] Periapse: So as of Monday you'll be in sync again.
 [15:29] Periapse: It's possible that we may have a griefer window open for the first couple of days after the refresh
 [15:30] Periapse: As you know, griefer accounts are typically very young, since they get banned readily. Normally they can't go to other grids because they haven't been around long enough to get sync'ed
 [15:31] Periapse: But I think we have plenty of ways of crashing these MONO sims without griefer intervention.
 [15:31] Siann Beck: Heh!
 [15:32] Periapse: So that's about it. To sum up:
 [15:32] Periapse: This latest update seems to have made things rather unstable, several new bugs and re-opening of old ones.
 [15:32] Periapse: We changed the key to prevent old bytecode from loading.
 [15:33] Periapse: We will work as fast as we can to get a newer, more stable version out.
 [15:33] Siann Beck: Great.
 [15:33] Periapse: And there will be a db refresh on Monday
 [15:33] Rex Cronon: until the next version is out, will things be in kind of a limbo?
 [15:34] Periapse: Well, we'll keep the regions up. Vektor is actually ablle to test, so some people probably can also.
 [15:34] Siann Beck: Maybe it just doesn't like scripts written by me :)
 [15:34] Periapse: Our focus will be first on the crashers, and then move on to the re-opened issues.
 [15:35] Rex Cronon: not a lot of people here
 [15:35] Periapse: Our test harness runs fine. But now we have a few new things to add to it.
 [15:35] Rex Cronon: i guess people not interested in mono?
 [15:35] Periapse: Well, traffic has been trending down since the opening.
 [15:36] Periapse: So has the number of bug reports filed
 [15:36] Periapse: Though we are starting to see that number climb again ;-)
 [15:36] Siann Beck: Personally, I've been waiting for the update, as I've tested everything I can with the previous version.
 [15:37] Siann Beck: I imagine there are others in that category.
 [15:37] Periapse: Oh, one other thing. Last week we found a case where one region would not startup properly
 [15:37] Periapse: We're still looking into it. I tried restoring simstates to no avail.
 [15:37] Periapse: Lots of Mono errors in the log.
 [15:37] Rex Cronon: there might be those that are waiting for havok4 and mono together
 [15:38] Periapse: Vektor did some old-skool SL magic and brought the region up.
 [15:38] Siann Beck: That too.
 [15:38] Periapse: Yes. I think we'll need to make Mono more stable before Sidewinder will allow us to play together.
 [15:38] Periapse: Right now we're a bad influence ;-)
 [15:38] Siann Beck: lol
 [15:39] Periapse: So any other questions?
 [15:39] Rex Cronon: none here
 [15:39] Siann Beck: I can't think of anything.
 [15:40] Periapse: Well, Siann, I'm going to make sure that Babbage and Scouse are aware of the problems you've been having with things that worked fine before.
 [15:40] Siann Beck: OK.
 [15:40] Periapse: But please do JIRAfy
 [15:40] Siann Beck: I'll see what I can come up with.
 [15:40] Periapse: He will need something to actually get ahold of to figure out what happened.
 [15:40] Siann Beck: OK.
 [15:41] Periapse: That height detector might be a good example.
 [15:41] Siann Beck: I don't like to post "It doesn't work!"
 [15:41] Siann Beck: Yeah.
 [15:41] Periapse: If you can make me a watcher on the issue, go ahead. If you can't feel free to IM me with the number.
 [15:41] Rex Cronon: there are quite a few free scripts
 [15:42] Siann Beck: OK.
 [15:42] Rex Cronon: and lots of other scripts might be based on those
 [15:42] Periapse: Rex? Free scripts where?
 [15:42] Rex Cronon: http://rpgstats.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
 [15:43] Siann Beck: I'm going to get going, I need to get over to the main grid. I'll do some testing later and see if I can't post some JIRA(s).
 [15:43] Periapse: Thx, Siann
 [15:43] Davie Zinner: See you Siann
 [15:43] Siann Beck: See you all later.
 [15:43] Rex Cronon: and i know that in world there are more available
 [15:43] Rex Cronon: bye
 [15:43] Periapse: I'll check it out.
 [15:44] Periapse: So if you gentleman don't have other questions I guess we'll wrap up this office hour
 [15:44] Davie Zinner: I'm good until Monday :-) Thanks Peri
 [15:44] Rex Cronon: no qustions
 [15:44] Rex Cronon: have a nice day
 [15:44] Periapse: Great. Stay tuned to the blog for updates. Have a great weekend