Viewer crashes when trying to login

[AnaLucia Gothly]

Alright, for the past 2 days I have been unable to enter SL. It started when I was at a club listening to some music. Then all of a sudden users started talking about frequent crashes and I saw that some people were disappearing. So it was probably true that there was some kind of issue with SL. Anyway, it did affect me and other users a little because every two minutes everyone's avatar would suddenly stop dancing at the same time and return to normal again. I thought this was a minor glitch and didn't make a big deal out of it. Then all of a sudden, my viewer shut itself and all I get is a message that I had been logged off of SL. So I waited for a little while and tried to login again, but as soon as that bar is full and I'm expecting to see my avatar again, the viewer crashes again and all I get to see is a crash report on my Macbook dock, which I can't even open.

 Since then I have been trying to login with no succes at all. Details of my frequent crashing include these things:

 

• I login at my last location
• Loading bar fills up
• Viewer has crashed, SL is shut down again
• A crash report appears on my MacBook dock and disappears as soon as it comes
• I am left with fury

 

I already replied in some similiar topics but no one will tell me what the problem is? If users in that region were talking about frequent crashes occuring in SL then it must have been a big issue and not only affecting me. Does anyone know what this problem is all about and when it will be fixed?

[Qie Niangao]

I'm not a Mac person, so hopefully somebody else will come along who has a clue what it means to get a crash report on the dock. Meanwhile, just to get the simplest stuff out of the way:

1. Have you tried logging in at a different location?
2. Can another (alt) account login successfully from your machine?
3. Have you rebooted your machine?
4. Have you manually cleared cache and settings? (not just from Preferences, but as for a clean install)

If you've tried all that, the next thing I'd do is get a console log to see what happens near the end, when it crashes. That's trivial on Linux, but I have no idea how to do it on a Mac. (What I would try is this little section about running the viewer from the Mac terminal, in hopes it logs to the terminal window while running, as on Linux.)

[AnaLucia Gothly]

• Well I've tried logging in at a different region, which worked for 5 seconds. I saw my avatar again and other users around me. Then my viewer shut itself and yet another crash report appeared/disappeared. 
• Just tried to register with a different account but there seems to be a registration error? The message I got was 'Registration is unavailable at this time, try again later o visit our Support page to contact Customer Support'. In fact, I did go to the Support page but there seems to be no support category for Viewer problems? Strange.
• I have rebooted my MacBook yes.
• Uninstalled SL and installed again - for at least 5 times now. And I deleted all cache of course.

I have no idea what to do with this problem. I was doing fine with SL for everyday now. But nothing of the above even worked.

[AnaLucia Gothly]

Up.

[AnaLucia Gothly]

Seriously? No one uses a Mac? No one knows anything?

This is getting very irritating. If no one considers helping me then I have to quit Second Life just because it's not compatible with MacBook's. I was doing fine for weeks in a row and now it's crashing every damn time I login and NO ONE knows what this means? 

I've logged on on SL today for 2 minutes before the Viewer crashed again. 2 whole minutes is all the time I got on SL in the past six days. I've even cleared out extra space and have 402,22 GB out of 499,25 GB available for storage which is more than enough. I've uninstalled and installed for 10 times, I've even tried the damn Beta Viewer which never passed beyond the login screen. 

This has to be fixed. Nothing is wrong with my Macbook Pro. Why is this happening? 

 

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Did you look at the SL log? it might contain some info why you crashed.

It should be here: /Users/[YOUR USERNAME]/Library/Application Support/SecondLife/logs

Do you monitor the temperatures of the graphics chip? Different people have been experiencing higher fps lately, higher fps means a warmer gpu. I'd expect your entire Macbook to crash if it overheats, not just the viewer, but who knows...

[Qie Niangao]

The reason I suggested trying an alt is that it cuts in half the possible sources of trouble: If the alt works, then it's something with the main character's account or avatar. If the alt doesn't work, it's something with the installation, machine, or network.

I suppose if creating an alt account still fails, we'd know there's something wrong with the network (or much less likely, the machine).

I'd certainly try rebooting the router and modem or whatever's between your machine and the ISP.

We know that, whatever the problem, it's not something about SL itself because there have been millions of successful logins since this problem started, and those must include thousands from MacBooks.

Because the original report suggested that others in the vicinity were crashing at the same time, and yet the problem persists in other regions, I somewhat suspect a bad attachment that's repeatedly crashing the viewer. That would be ruled out if a fresh alt has the same problem. I don't know how to start the viewer using one of the default avatars, with no attachments.

[AnaLucia Gothly]

I haven't been able to access those logs, nor does my MacBook Crash Reporter prove to be useful as it doesn't show the actual report to me after it has crashed. But I did saved my System Profile with all the hardware, software, network information. Only problem is what do I do with it now? I'm wondering if Linden Labs receives any news about my account's crashings. That would be useful but I doubt they'd investigate it.

Oh and imporant thing: I've logged in succesfully with an alternative account and SL seemed to work fine.  So now that we can rule SL's server out, does this mean there's probably something on my main avatar or inventory that prevents SL from running? If so, what is there to do about this? I can't detach or delete the 'thing' that causes this, seeing as I'm not getting access to my main account. And even I did for a few minutes, how am I going to scan my total inventory on bugs?

 

[Qie Niangao]

I was so hoping somebody who knows Macs would be able to help. It's really unfortunate that you couldn't find the logs that Kwak suggested... they have to be somewhere, but where?

But yeah, I think we know that there's something funky with your main... and I think it's about a 90% likelihood that it's some avatar attachment... but I just can't find a way to start these graphical viewers using the test avatars with no attachments. I wonder if there are any TPVs with that feature.

Thinking along the lines of TPVs, it would be useful to try a text viewer, on the theory that whatever's crashing the regular viewers may be doing so with bad graphics that wouldn't bother a non-graphical viewer. Unfortunately, in the TPV directory I don' find a non-graphical viewer for the Mac. (You wouldn't happen to have access to a Windows or Linux machine? An Android? Even an iPhone or iPad?)

[AnaLucia Gothly]

I really have no idea how to find those logs. I do want to find them desperately but I have never searched for them before.

This adres:  /Users/[YOUR USERNAME]/Library/Application Support/SecondLife/logs   >>>  I should paste this in the search engine of my Mac right? Well I tried this but nothing came out. I hope I did it the correct way. Finder (Mac search engine) doesn't seem to work that way sadly when you could paste an internal adress of anything in computer in the search engine of Windows, which works much easier. 

And yes we do have 3 other Windows based computers in the house (though Mac is my personal computer), and I also do have an iPhone as an iPad. But what does an iPhone have to do with the SL viewer? Don't tell me we can access SL through an iPhone/iPad? Lol. But yeah, my Mac seems to be off limits for now regarding SL. 

Btw, thank you for helping me through this. I really appreciate it. Though there haven't been any Mac-experts helping me out yet, your information is of great help to me. 

[Qie Niangao]

---

But what does an iPhone have to do with the SL viewer?

---

Well, the idea was to use a text-only SL client to try to fix whatever ails your main avatar, and I noticed in the TPV directory that there's one for iOS called Pocket Metaverse (which I've never used and don't even know whether it can remove attachments, which would be the first thing to try in recovering that main avatar). But if you can get to a Windows box... well, I'd be tempted to sneak the regular viewer onto it and see if that happens to work, but if that didn't work, there are a couple of Windows text-only SL clients listed, Radegast and Metabolt, either of which might let you remove all attachments and then try again on the Mac.

Now, the log file location.  I'm pretty sure that "/Users/[YOUR USERNAME]/Library/Application Support/SecondLife/logs" is a path, and that the first part, "/Users" is where your home folder lives, and that "[YOUR USERNAME]" is just referring to the name of your personal home folder (so, if your name were, say, Wendy, when you open the Finder, it would first open to a folder called "Wendy" -- and the full path for that is really "/Users/Wendy"). So, for the rest of that path, you'd look in your home folder for the next level: a folder called "Library"...  and inside that, a folder called "Application Support"... and inside, a "SecondLife" folder, containing a folder called "logs" with the log files inside.

(I have this image of Mac users on the sidelines, watching with amusement as we try to puzzle out this alien technology, and waiting to see if we stumble on a solution.)

Meanwhile, it may help to know more details of your Mac's SL configuration, which you can get from inside the viewer before logging in, from "Help" on the menubar, "About Second Life", and the button "Copy to Clipboard"--then pasting all that into a reply in this thread. At this point, I don't think there's actually anything about that configuration that's a problem, since it's working fine with an alt avatar, but maybe there's a detail that matches some obscure known problem.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

If you can log in successfully with an alt, could be the group tag on your main avatar has been corrupted. This is a known cause of crashing soon as logged in. If you can log in long enough, set Groups to None or use a tex-based app to do so.

Alternatively, get your alt to ask the group owner to kick you from the group. This of course assumes you know what group tag you were wearing.

Edit: Just noticed you said you were able to log in for 2 mins. That would be a long time for this group tag issue so perhaps not. Anyway, try it.