I've been a bit of a busy beaver yesterday and eventually found a way to detect redmap situations (minimap going red when the viewer looses connection to the current sim). It was quite easy once I came up with the brilliant(!) idea, to actually look at the minimap source code instead of digging through the communication parts *duh*.
It will detect the situation in the same moment the minimap would detect it (which may be some after the loss of connection actually occurs). It seems to work quite well, the only risk is that it detects false positives, so I need a bit of feedback if you have situations where it reports the problem while it actually doesn't exist. In any case there is an option to turn the warning off (debug options, ctrl+alt+s).
There is also a bit of smaller stuff, like tweaking the last patch which deals with the viewer stalls and source changes which should help with Linux compiles (non portable code fixed and a Linux files.lst file updated).
As always, the change log has all the details and should especially be helpful for users who are new to my viewers (see the bottom of the file).
Source code is also on the server, so keep those Linux builds coming. And if someone wants to do a Mac build I'm all for it (my own Mac is still in the works and I guess it'll be a long time before I'll be able to make a distributable build).
Disclaimer: This viewer is unofficial and although I am doing my best to make it better than the release viewer, it may contain extra bugs and you will have to trust me that there is no malicious code in it. Please also understand that it runs on the main grid with your real Second Life account and inventory. Also read the disclaimer/header in the Install.txt in my archive.
First make sure you have the Linden release candiate 1.18.3.5 (download link) installed.
Then download nicholaz-BE-p.zip from my server and while the download runs, have a look at the installation instructions and the change log!
After the download completes, follow the instructions and make sure they go into the SecondLifeReleaseCandidate folder!
PS: There is an in-world group for announcements of my releases: Search, Groups, "Nicholaz"
Monday, September 24, 2007
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20 comments:
Nicholaz! You're da man!
You didn't say what kind of warning you get for a red map situation. Assuming it is not already done, would there be any way to start constantly ringing the bell (Control-g) when a red map occurs?
Kudos and thanks so much for all your great work!
Whoa, that redmap stuff is huge! If possible, maybe you could pull those changes out into a patch and submit it to LL. Maybe we should create a JIRA issue for this if there isn't one already.
It's really important to know when the client loses its connection to the sim, so that you don't spend a half hour changing textures on a build only to find that none of your changes were going anywhere. I've never understood why the client doesn't detect this situation and close out, given that at least the minimap knows something's gone wrong.
--Lex Neva
It's a notification box in the middle of the SL window, accompanied by a one time sound.
Lex: let's first see if it works. I'm eventually submitting all my stuff to LL (at least that which I see demand for).
In my experience it takes quite a long time for the minimap to acknowlege a connection loss. Especially when talking to people this does not bode well. Is there a way to tweak the code or to implements a variable that allows the timeout to be detected sooner?
Is there a problem with your server? I keep timing out when I try to access the downloads, and a few other people mentioned the same problem in-world.
deeta: there is a timeout inside SL, that is when the sim doesn't talk to the viewer for some time (I think 100sec) it's considered disconnected. But I don't want to mess with that.
ann: yes, server is down at the moment, but provider said he's working on it. Please try in an hour or so.
Nicholas,
Could another tack to try monitor the Packets In / Out? I know there are some situations where Packets In = 1 (or floats 0-2) for awhile if a sim stalls, but often thats a sign of a dead sim too.
I'll have to watch and see if Red Map occurs when In/Out both go to 0, and if their interrelated. Possibly if the Packets In drops below 2 for a period(say 10 seconds) it will prompt on a possible disconnect? (Kind of a early-warning of sorts.)
This will however have false positives, as I've seen a sim stall for up to a minute (or sometimes seems longer) and then will suddenly "Catch Up" and return to business.
Kooky: This may be just a start, I'll see where it leads to. Early warning or tweaking the timeout may be a possibility, but I think the Lindens didn't choose the current timeout without reason.
Another idea will be to try to reconnect to the dead circuit/SIM ... but time will tell if that is possible.
Linux build available at usual location:
http://emak.free.fr/src/sl-nicholaz-linux/
<3 <3 -Lilly- <3 <3
One more suggestion.
We often look at people's profiles, there is partner listed for some people. It would be good if clicking on a partner's name would display the partner's profile. Its much more effort to type the name in search instead.
Ok, just to notify you: my bleedingedge-O build for Mac is up for downloads and first tests of the patch-distributor now:
http://radio-boomslang.shacknet.nu/~bb/articles/nicholaz-edition-mac/
Not yet a BE-p, because I didn't have time to build it, yet. But the O runs wonderfully on my mac, so I thought I better share early :)
The distribution is just the executable packed in a patcher, so I can get around the license restricitions on libkdu and other stuff.
:)
MacOS X (Intel): http://tilly-server.de/files/nicholaz-be-p-mac.zip (61MB)
barney: There are license issues? Darn... :-(
Okay, I made http://tilly-server.de/files/nicholaz-be-p-macos-bin.zip then, same idea as barneys, bin and xml files only. But I didnt add a patcher. :-(
Forget the big archive. If you get something under that older url, it must be random bits...
Wow, from mentioning it to yu until a fix comes out in less than 2 days? Thanks!
I had the situation two times already, but in every case I noticed it faster than the Viewer noticed it. So a reduced timeout would be desirable.
And can you implement a "reconnect" button into the menu?
Darn! The email server did eat the blog notifications ... I almost missed the Mac builds!
Will post them immediately ... THANKIES!
the redmap thing doesn't seem to be working so well thus far. Out of the 45 times I've been disconnected since installing this, the warning has only fired once
Peter: It was more like an issue of enough people pestering me to look into it.
Regarding the timeout. There is a specific timeout, the comm part of the viewer giving the sim (or whatever causes the problem) enough time to recover. This is something which I currently do not want to meddle with.
Anonymous: Does the map go actually red in those cases you are having?
Hmm i can't get the beacons for scripted objects running. It doesn't display them like in the oldschool. any ideas?
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