Simulator User Group/Transcripts/2012.10.09

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== List of Speakers ==
Arcane Laval 	Barrington Desantis	Gee Mcauley
Kennylex Luckless 	Lares Carter 	Martinrj Fayray
Motor Loon 	Nalates Urriah 	Qie Niangao
Rex Cronon 	Simon Linden 	Sniper Siemens
Tankmaster Finesmith	Theresa Tennyson 	Tiberious Neruda
Yuzuru Jewell 	 	
== Transcript ==
[12:01] Simon Linden: I can cover the news about updates
[12:01] Lares Carter: Hi Simon
[12:02] Simon Linden: We rolled a very minor change out this morning from one of the RCs ... it's really not any functional change but was needed to go grid-wide before another one goes into RC
[12:02] Simon Linden: Tomorrow we'll update the RC channels with two different versions
[12:03] Simon Linden: The one on Magnum is just getting the same change that went to the main channel. Magnum has code to help sims run better on new hardware
[12:04] Simon Linden: BlueSteel and LeTigre will get the same version, which is pretty minor but important - it's a back-end query optimization that should help with our database load
[12:04] Simon Linden: It's fixing the worst query, which is one of those that gets pretty ugly with large groups
[12:05] Rex Cronon: hello everybody
[12:05] Arcane Laval: Hi Rex
[12:05] Rex Cronon: hi arcane
[12:05] Simon Linden: Hopefully in the long run that will ease the DB load and things will run smoother
[12:05] Simon Linden: That's it for my news
[12:06] Motor Loon: Hopefully in the long run Second Life™ will have x 2 the residents and the load will end up being the same as today ;-)
[12:06] Simon Linden: I don't see any other Lindens so the invisible table is open for topics or questions
[12:06] Nalates Urriah: IS the query thing Baker's Large Groups fix?
[12:06] Simon Linden: yeah, I'd love to have those problems, Motor :)
[12:06] Motor Loon: ditto
[12:06] Simon Linden: No Nal, it's not the same query but a similar one
[12:07] Nalates Urriah: So, Large Groups didn't make it back into RC?
[12:07] Simon Linden: No, not yet. I'm hoping for next week but we're still working on the prim accounting problem that caused the rollback on Wednesday
[12:07] Motor Loon: nasty one
[12:08] Simon Linden: That's been my last few days of work ... it's an odd one
[12:08] Nalates Urriah: Thx... I friends that are waiting for it...
[12:08] Kennylex Luckless: I was asked to deliver a question about the old regions and Natoma. Are they on older servers and why is it so that Minna and Natoma often has problem with lag and asset servers and so?
[12:08] Simon Linden: Yeah, I'd really like that to more forward.
[12:09] Tankmaster Finesmith: why is the group list being bundeled with the other issue?
[12:09] Simon Linden: It's not on old servers, Kennylex -- what type of problems are you seeing?
[12:09] Theresa Tennyson: The Ivory Tower of Primitives on Natoma is awesome, but its' physics load must be nightmarish with all the modified torii, etc.
[12:10] Kennylex Luckless: I has get "Nav mesh unable to load"
[12:10] Kennylex Luckless: Alsi some days I has not been able to deleat build for Asset reeors.
[12:10] Simon Linden: hmmm, that sounds like an asset problem -- was it something that used to load OK before?
[12:11] Kennylex Luckless: I could not cross sim border to Zoe, and that kind of thing happen rather often there
[12:12] Simon Linden: Did it get noticeably worse recently, or has it always been like that?
[12:12] Kennylex Luckless: But just now it looks like I has problems, some sculpties and textures does not Load here
[12:13] Motor Loon: fucked up cache mabye
[12:13] Kennylex Luckless: It has been bad long time, seldom it go smooth, but last days a bit worse.
[12:13] Tankmaster Finesmith: maybe it needs to be upgraded to P3s
[12:13] Theresa Tennyson: Have you been there since the restarts today?
[12:14] Simon Linden: ok, I know one developer who's looking into some similar things so I'll pass it along to him. I just looked at our stats and it seems healthy at a first glance ... fps is high, and it really doesn't have a lot of scripts or too many objects
[12:14] Kennylex Luckless: Last time all Pathfinding things went to one and same spot and could not walk over a bridge if it was a prim underti
[12:15] Kennylex Luckless: kk, I has to clear chace and relog.
[12:15] Simon Linden: That's a good point, Theresa - regions that were on the main channel may not have been restarted for a while, and we know performance will slowly degrade. Since they got restarted today, overall things should be a little beter
[12:16] Kennylex Luckless: It looks like all of you has gray hair and sit on potatoes.
[12:16] Motor Loon: oh thats not your cache... we really do have grey hair and sit on potatoes
[12:16] Kennylex Luckless: :-D Soon back, be nice.
[12:16] Rex Cronon: i think those r brown eggs;)
[12:17] Rex Cronon: hatching chickens:)
[12:17] Barrington Desantis: As long as they're not Sion chickens. Unless they have a pathfinding update.. ;-)
[12:17] Simon Linden: Phoenix you asked earlier about the group code being bundled with other work ... that's really a factor of how we divide up the releases
[12:18] Tankmaster Finesmith: ok
[12:18] Simon Linden: For regular bug fixing, we'll work on stuff, put a bunch of fixes together for QA and then release
[12:18] Tankmaster Finesmith: would just be nice to see baker's work get out soon ?
[12:19] Nalates Urriah: Yes
[12:19] Simon Linden: There's a judgement call on how much gets bundled together, and a bunch of things go into the decision, like how overloaded the QA guys are, how many other things are trying to get to RC, risks of one part blocking it (like now), stuff like that
[12:20] Simon Linden: Yep, that's at the top of our list as well - we'd like to see it get out
[12:20] Tankmaster Finesmith: just currious
[12:20] Tankmaster Finesmith: thz
[12:21] Qie Niangao: Probably been some thought about how to make sure something like the LeTigre rollback doesn't happen again. A little different: Wonder if there might be ways to much more quickly *detect* that a rollout is going awry, and stop it before it incurs too much rework for Operations.
[12:21] Simon Linden: I've had a lot of discussions like that in the past few days :P
[12:22] Tankmaster Finesmith: I know oskar is working on an automated simrestore process
[12:22] Motor Loon: restore?
[12:22] Qie Niangao: Hehehe, okay. :) (FWIW, I was vaguely thinking about anti-fraud software that detects *anomalies* without knowing, a priori, what kind of anomalies to look for.)
[12:22] Nalates Urriah: Restore - as in load a region backup
[12:22] Simon Linden: We really want to catch problems of that size on the Aditi beta grid, so that's means augmenting the testing there
[12:22] Tankmaster Finesmith: to an earlier point in time, motor
[12:22] Motor Loon: rollback
[12:23] Tankmaster Finesmith: same thing
[12:23] Tiberious Neruda: ...what problem are we talking about?
[12:23] Simon Linden: We discussed adding some alarms to the system ... like if you start up, and are suddenly returning a lot of things, as happened Wednesday
[12:23] Theresa Tennyson: The problem with Aditi is nobody LIVES there or has a business.
[12:23] Tankmaster Finesmith: world peace, tib
[12:23] Tankmaster Finesmith: :D
[12:23] Kennylex Luckless: Yeah, last time Stillman went flat and Lindens had to work as maniacs while folk was asking for teddy bears :-D
[12:23] Tiberious Neruda: I mean, what happened with the update that needed it rolled back?
[12:24] Qie Niangao: Right, that's the sort of thing... but preferably not having to list every possible condition that might be checked.
[12:24] Simon Linden: It's a tough call, since there are so many possible things that can go wrong
[12:24] Rex Cronon: u guys have QA. right? so how come your QA guys didn't test the deploy on all sim version before releasing it?
[12:24] Tankmaster Finesmith: QA is overrated
[12:24] Theresa Tennyson: TIberious, prim accounting went haywire, people had objects returned, dogs laid down with cats, etc.
[12:24] Tankmaster Finesmith: :D
[12:24] Motor Loon: lol
[12:24] Tiberious Neruda: oh...
[12:25] Simon Linden: It was tested on the Aditi grid ... the tough thing with SL testing is running it on all those combinations - it's just never possible to have complete test coverage
[12:25] Nalates Urriah: There is nothing worse than having cat hair on a dog...
[12:25] Simon Linden: This one shouldn't have slipped through, that's for certain
[12:25] Tiberious Neruda: problem with Aditi is that there's really no permanent presence there
[12:25] Rex Cronon: there is a limited number of sim types. obviously somebody didn
[12:25] Rex Cronon: 't test on letigre
[12:25] Tiberious Neruda: nobody's using it for much more than a massive sandbox
[12:26] Tankmaster Finesmith: the only time the beta grid gets used is for oaskar's UG
[12:26] Simon Linden: LeTigre isn't a different type of simulator or hardware, it's just a group of about 10% of the grid
[12:26] Theresa Tennyson: Could you roll a percentage of each RC first thing in the morning, wait a few hours and then roll the rest if no problems are found?
[12:27] Simon Linden: The RC channels are actually designed to be representative of the whole grid, so we try to keep a mix of the different types of regions like full, mainland, Linden Homes, etc.
[12:27] Rex Cronon: if letigre is the same as other sims how come things borked only there?
[12:27] Nalates Urriah: Is there any news on the Network Lag thing that kills regions with social events?
[12:27] Simon Linden: Because that's the only place the bad version was rolledout
[12:27] Tiberious Neruda: because it was the update that went to it that caused problems
[12:28] Rex Cronon: oh
[12:28] Simon Linden: On one hand, the system worked ... we found a problem before it got to the whole grid, which might have been how this would have happened before we started the Release Channels
[12:29] Simon Linden: but it really was so bad we definitely want to catch something like that even earlier
[12:29] Tankmaster Finesmith: agreed
[12:29] Tiberious Neruda: Theresa had an interesting idea...
[12:29] Rex Cronon: u might need a RC that has only 5-10 sims in it
[12:30] Tiberious Neruda: ...couldn't you pick an even smaller subset of sims to roll out to at first to monitor for issues?
[12:30] Simon Linden: So, like I said, we've had a bunch of meetings discussing what and why it happened, and have some better tests added to the regular test pass so this specific problem won't happen again
[12:30] Simon Linden: That's one idea we're looking at, Tiberious
[12:31] Tiberious Neruda: it's Theresa's idea... give her the credit
[12:31] Simon Linden: ok :)
[12:32] Simon Linden: SL is an amazingly difficult system to test because it's so large and diverse, and we don't really know what a lot of the content does since Linden doesn't make it
[12:32] Tankmaster Finesmith: any word on the 54m linking issue?
[12:32] Simon Linden: I think Andrew was working on that ... I don't know if he had a fix or not
[12:33] Tankmaster Finesmith: ok
[12:33] Simon Linden: ah, I just checked - that will be back to normal for the next bug-fix release, the one with the large group support
[12:33] Simon Linden: Hopefully in RC next Wednesday
[12:35] Tankmaster Finesmith: sounds good
[12:35] Simon Linden listens to the crickets
[12:36] Tankmaster Finesmith: we do need mesh PF crickets! :D
[12:36] Kennylex Luckless: That is good sign
[12:36] Simon Linden: I really do need some pathfinding critters for this space ... if anyone has pointers to some fun ones, let me know
[12:36] Kennylex Luckless: If folks has nothing to say here LL had do a great job.
[12:37] Theresa Tennyson: Or we have abandoned all hope.
[12:37] Simon Linden: yeah, I wasn't going to mention that alternative
[12:37] Theresa Tennyson: What is going to happen server side with the HTTP libraries?
[12:37] Kennylex Luckless: No working PF on roof?
[12:38] Simon Linden: I'm eager to use them, once it settles down with the viewer changes
[12:38] Simon Linden: I'd also like to hear some real numbers from Monty's work to get an idea what kind of improvement he sees
[12:38] Nalates Urriah: Horatio the polar bear cub... http://blog.nalates.net/nalates/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Horatio-425x435.jpg
[12:39] Tankmaster Finesmith: I think the first fase was more for reliablility and not slowing down the viewer so much when its decoding the textures
[12:40] Simon Linden: I really need to clean up the PF options here
[12:40] Simon Linden: Right, Phoenix. I know he was also looking at significant changes in connection management, which is where I'd expect the bigger wins
[12:40] Nalates Urriah: You'll have fun with distorted prims in the Navmesh...
[12:41] Simon Linden: oh, I'm sure I'll be yelling at Falcon at some point :)
[12:41] Theresa Tennyson: The problems I had with animations loading seem gone now that I have faster Internet and presumably a better router.
[12:42] Tankmaster Finesmith: the actiontech routers seem good
[12:42] Simon Linden: That's good to hear
[12:43] Theresa Tennyson: Apparently Comcast is actually good at SOMETHING. Sometimes.
[12:43] Tankmaster Finesmith: lol
[12:44] Simon Linden: I work a bunch on a setup that just switched to Comcast and it's getting 5x the speed as before, so I'm much happier :)
[12:44] Qie Niangao: I never thought I'd love Comcast. Then I moved to Canada. Oh, how I miss competent telecom providers.
[12:44] Rex Cronon: comcast is cable?
[12:44] Simon Linden: It is here, yes
[12:44] Tankmaster Finesmith: I thought all comsact had was cable
[12:45] Simon Linden: Maybe ... it's such a huge company I wouldn
[12:45] Simon Linden: ....wouldn't be surprised if they had other options too
[12:46] Theresa Tennyson: Any news on server-side avatar rendering?
[12:46] Theresa Tennyson: i.e. baking.
[12:47] Simon Linden: Nothing interesting ... I heard some people talking about an alpha-layer bug, so they're coming along. I have no news about when it might get started
[12:47] Tankmaster Finesmith: I g2g, thanks for your time and info, simon
[12:47] Simon Linden: I think that's going to be a good step in the right direction ... and maybe make things better for text-based viewers
[12:47] Simon Linden: See you, Phoenix
[12:48] Theresa Tennyson: Will it also render attachments or just the body layers?
[12:48] Simon Linden: I believe it is just doing the body layers, so the "baking" process will not be done on the viewer
[12:49] Simon Linden: However, and this is just random ideas, not real plans -- having some server-side rendering is interesting because it might be useful for other features
[12:49] Nalates Urriah: Nyx said no attachments, just the av
[12:50] Gee Mcauley: Simon, I had some sence knocked into me this morning about BUG-235. When will that fix be rolled out?
[12:50] Simon Linden: one second...
[12:51] Simon Linden: ah, that's the linkability rules. It's been fixed and _might_ be in an RC channel next week
[12:51] Gee Mcauley: Cool beand...
[12:51] Gee Mcauley: As a builder I was on the side leave it, but found out that would been a bad idea.
[12:52] Gee Mcauley: Cool Beans**
[12:52] Simon Linden: yeah, all sorts of things can go bad if you have really large, linked items. It can really hurt performance, and might make it possible for something you can't see to affect your avatar
[12:53] Gee Mcauley: Right now it borks the editing of linked items.
[12:54] Simon Linden: Does it stop you from editing that way?
[12:55] Gee Mcauley: When you make a move of a linked item it snaps back. It is not the usual lag issue which gives two moves form the initial intended move.
[12:56] Gee Mcauley: If your interested I can shoot you a copy of the club I have here.
[12:57] Simon Linden: That sounds a little different from BUG-235. That one is about linkable distances not being enforced ... does yours occur with any size objects?
[13:00] Simon Linden: ok, that's the bell ... thanks everyone for coming today
[13:00] Simon Linden: and thanks for the nice quiet chat :)
[13:00] Martinrj Fayray: goodbye Simon!
[13:00] Sniper Siemens: ty Simon
[13:00] Theresa Tennyson: Bye Simon!
[13:00] Rex Cronon: tc simon
[13:00] Yuzuru Jewell: Thank you, Simon.
[13:00] Gee Mcauley: TC all
[13:00] Nalates Urriah: bye
[13:01] Rex Cronon: tc everybody and have nice day:)
[13:01] Simon Linden: See you next time
[13:01] Arcane Laval: Byes
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