Frequent crashes of Kuula region

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

Kuula region has been crashing rather frequently, particularly on the last two weekends. A script running in the NCI Kuula parcel (one of the major player-help locations in SL) has recorded over 40 crashes.

What I have personally observed is the following:

1: Nearby Chat goes quiet. Sometimes animations being run by other players seems to halt.

2: My viewer closes.

3: I restart my viewer. Sometimes I use a different viewer, though that seems to make no difference. Sometimes it is not possible to log-in direct to Kuula region. When I log-in to my home location, Kuula-region may not be immediately accessible to a teleport. When I arrive in Kuula some people who were there are not there. Some people arrive and ask if Kuula has crashed again. The crash recorder script has logged a new crash.

Caveats: I don't know what triggers the recorder. but the events do coincide with the apparent crashes I experience. Also, while it could be a connection problem, seeing people from many different parts of the world returning to Kuula believing that they experienced a crash suggests that it has to have a cause at least close to the SL servers.

Currently Kuula is running under Snack RC. There has been other odd behaviour. Is this a factor? It should be dead easy to test whether the Snack RC server code is a part of the problem. Just switch Kuula back to the main server channel. Though this wouldn't distinguish between the Snack RC and the physical server hardware as causes of the problem.

I haven't bothered trying to involve Support: there are people involved in NCI management trying to do that. What I have heard of the results is not encouraging.

I see that the CDN system that Snack RC testing is due for a wider deployment. With my experience, that makes me rather nervous. We may see something that suggests the recent problems have some cause other than the actual Snack RC code. Is it something wrong with the server hardware? If so, why hasn't it been noticed?

I cannot help but wonder if anyone is actually collecting information on what is happening in this rather small release channel, in the early stages of the deployment of a rather big change in how SL works.

 

[Cincia Singh]

The mainland region Quordlepleen (QDLPLN) is on the Snack RC channel; we have Smooth Jazz Club on 1/2 of QDLPLN. We haven't seen any behavior like you describe. In fact QDLPLN has been running smoothly since we were moved to Snack a couple weeks ago.

[Carol Darkthief]

Griefers have been suggested, but I've never heard of anyone identifying them. There are so many possibilities, so little definite information, and no sign of any help from the Lindens. For something as new as this, on a special small relesae channel, that's a bit worrying.

[triad8974]

I might suggest watching the STATISTIC BAR located in the Advanced menu. I have see that crashes coincide witha massive increase in UDP packets and watch the Ping for the sim. That way you can watch the data yourself on what might be the problem but of course not the fix. Crashes

Thank you for your post on this subject. I watch this all the time. Kuula seems to be the worst  by watching the data in the SATISTICS BAR.

 

triad8974

 

[triad8974]

Greetings:

also, and  psrdon me for not thinking of this in the last post, but I see a lot of avi's just dropping out away and just staying in the middle of kuula.  I am not sure but if the servers must look and send updated data to thes AWAY avi's this takes up server time. I think it would be prudent to take your avi out of kuula to set yourself AWAY.

And it is annoying for the need to work your avi around them which causes a minute increase in traffic to Kuula. One Avi I saw lifted his self above Kuula and was in the air in the AWAY mode.  

This is small and petty amount of traffic to deal with but every packet counts.

 

triad8974