Server Deployments – Week 42
As always, please refer to the week’s forum deployment thread for the latest news and updates.
Tuesday October 15th saw the Main channel updated with the server maintenance project previously on all three RC channels in week 41.
The planned deployment of a new server maintenance project to all three RC channels was threatened at the 11th hour by the discovery of a bug which took time to resolved, and left the package teetering on the edge of whether it would pass QA testing in time to make the deployment cut-off.
Speaking at the Server Beta meeting on Thursday October 17th, Maestro Linden expanded on this last-minute bug. He explained that it took the form of objects failing to vanish from a user’s field of view after being de-rezzed, and would instead remain as a ghosted object until touched, because the user’s viewer wouldn’t get the update message that the object had been de-rezzed. The problem for the Lab was that the issue would occur in some places but not in others, and seemed to be dependent on things like camera position and draw distance, making it hard to reproduce consistently.
Andrew Linden finally worked out that the problem would only occur in regions with a neighbour to the east and if the user’s viewer was connected to that region. So depending on the region, the object’s position, your camera position and draw distance, the bug might or might not trigger.
While the issue was successfully addressed and the update package successfully deployed on schedule, the Lab are still uncertain as to why the bug should only occur when there is a neighbouring region to the east; however, it’s fair to say that this is not the first “east related” bug to have been found.
Group Ban List
Baker Linden is continuing with internal testing with the new code, using Maestro and Caleb Linden as his guinea pigs. Apparently, the server-side code is hung-up in LL’s internal QA, possibly awaiting resources there. As such, it has yet to become visible and there are currently no regions available on Aditi which include the server-side updates.
Other Items
A problem has been noted following-on from the recent updates to prevent people from using recursive rezzing to grief regions (see my week 35 and week 37 reports). As a consequence of this, some engaging in combat in Second Life have encountered issues wherein combat vehicles in regions with short auto-return times can have their ordnance immediately returned when a weapon is fired, and any temp vehicles are unable to rez attachments, even when sat upon.
Commenting on the situation, Maestro agreed the use-case is legitimate and that some exemption should be made for sat-upon vehicles / objects in these circumstances. He’s agreed to put the matter to Simon and Andrew Linden for further discussion on the best way to approach and resolve the issue.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 