Dont clear Cache

[Sephina Frostbite]

My whole 3 years of sl Ive been told over and over clear your cache now today I was told never clear your cache... um what??? Whats your thoughts?

[Ceka Cianci]

who told you that?(not really wanting their name)

and what was going on that brought up that kind of answer?

[valerie Inshan]

Not just my thoughts, but Firestorm's reliable recommendations. :smileyhappy:

"Please do not clear your cache daily or on a regular basis.

It defeats the purpose of having one.

Only clear cache if you have problems, such as frequent crashing or texture corruption."

[Ceka Cianci]

---

valerie Inshan wrote:

Not just my thoughts, but Firestorm's reliable recommendations. :smileyhappy:

"Please do not 

clear

 your 

cache

 daily or on a regular basis

.

 

It defeats the purpose of having one

.

 

Only 

clear

 

cache

 if you have problems, such as frequent crashing or texture corruption."

---

oh ya that makes sense..

ithought she was saying she heard to never do it..

 

ya that would defeat having one if you had to reload it all the time..

i bet it dives into internet banwidth as well  redoing it like that..

[Freya Mokusei]

Sometimes clear cache.

There are cases for doing it (texture corruption, index corruption, data/view inconsistancy, mixed viewer craziness, inventory load failure)

And not doing it (network throughput, interface load, duplicating data, inventory tree correlation, inventory load failure)

Finding the cause of the failure is an important step in determining the remedy.

[Sephina Frostbite]

I was having issues with my viewer. Whenever I place an obect down or a bag and go to open it my viewer crashes. It  doesnt do it all the time. Its driving me nuts because I went on a shopping spree and cant even open it. I know I could if I sand box but whats the purpse of having a home then. I said Ill try clear cash when said group said NEVER CLEAR CACHE. I was confused. I dont wanna go back the SL viewer. I LOVE Firestorm but she is being a brat right now.. sigh.

[Eve Greymoon]

They're doing rolling restarts right now. I'd wait until they're done to clear cache. After that normal rules should apply.

[Perrie Juran]

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Eve Greymoon wrote:

They're doing rolling restarts right now. I'd wait until they're done to clear cache. After that normal rules should apply.

---

This! This! This!

As big a pain as it is, we all know the normal schedule for Rolling Restarts is Tues & Weds.

So avoiding rezzing objects, ESPECIALLY  'no copy' objects while these are going on is the smartest course of action.

Or at least wait till you know that the SIM you are on has been restarted   You can check the version number in help/about or use a SIM status tracker.

 

[Carl Thibodeaux]

Clearing cache is no fun whatsoever.

I killed my Firestorm client last time i did it. 

Been weary ever since to do so. :matte-motes-stress:

[Perrie Juran]

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Sephina Frostbite wrote:

I was having issues with my viewer. Whenever I place an obect down or a bag and go to open it my viewer crashes. It  doesnt do it all the time. Its driving me nuts because I went on a shopping spree and cant even open it. I know I could if I sand box but whats the purpse of having a home then. I said Ill try clear cash when said group said NEVER CLEAR CACHE. I was confused. I dont wanna go back the SL viewer. I LOVE Firestorm but she is being a brat right now.. sigh.

---

I know that our time can be valuable and it can be frustrating when our plans get messed up.

One problem with 'clearing cache' is that it is a knee jerk reaction that often has nothing to do with the problem we are having.  And while it occasionally appears to fix a problem, you'd have no proof.

Last night I was having a terrible time with Logging In and Teleporting.  As it turned out for a brief period of time there were some network problems on the East Coast with ten servers reporting 100% packet loss.  I have a crazy friend who lives near me who  tracks this stuff and he sent me the link.  It didn't last long and as soon as it was cleared up my problems stopped.  We just happened to get caught by the problem.  It didn't last long.

That said, I wanted to post how I handle problems.  This is anecdotal but it works for me and saves me lots of headaches.

Any time I am experiencing an extended problem that lasts more than 5 minutes, I try a simple relog.  If that does not fix it I check Grid Status Report.

If nothing is reported on Grid Status, I reboot my computer and reset my modem.  I do them at the same time because they both take about the same time to do.  For me at least, better than 95% of the time this resolves any issues I am having.  It is also why I get bugged by the knee jerk statement from people, "I know I've got a good Internet," when they are having troubles"

If that does not resolve my problem, I just stay patient for a while.  Not all grid problems get posted on Grid Status.  And the other 5% of the time, the problems seem to clear up by themselves.

It's just a fact of SL that sometimes it tasks our patience.  It would only be after an extended period of time that I would consider clearing my cache.

Yes, I dislike when my plans get waylaid, but SL being what it is, I know it happens and do my best to go with the flow.

If you clear your Cache when actually it is other problems on the Grid or on the Internet causing it, you are going to have even more trouble until those problems get resolved.

 

[Nova Convair]

I never clear cache, except when doing a clean viewer install due to an update or if i encounter problems (which happens maybe once per 3 months). At my home sim I have a cache hit rate of 99% so why should I load all the stuff over and over again?

Of course I have the "reload texture" obtion in context menu (firestorm) which is useful to kick in a texture that refuses to load. Clearing cache instead for that issue is way too much efforts I think.

Having bad network and/or wlan, slow computer, beeing on an overloaded sim - clearing cache shouldnt help here too.

Of course many people say so, but due to the placebo effect and the fact that they did a restart too, I will not believe them just so.

[Sassy Kenin]

 

I clear mine one time a month then log into linden viewer as anything in inventory lost by firestorm reappears:smileyhappy:

[Marianne Little]

I have problems with the last Firestorm Viewers too. So I have switched to the official viewer with Starlight skin added on. That really helped so the crude official viewer feels smoother.

All the time I have more than one viewer installed. ATM I have 4: The LL official viewer, Cool VL Viewer, Firestorm, Nirans. I use them for differnt purposes. Firestorm was what I used most, Niran for quality pictures, Cool for a rock steady viewer but the interface is old. The official viewer is feeling better as said, I will use it until it's a more stabile FS version.

I would go to a sandbox and open your stuff. You can also type in Hatton when you log in again. It's a sim with only water and it's easy for the computer since it does not have to struggle with loading. Well, sometimes too many avatars teleport into Hatton so I must load them, but then I walk into a corner and lower my draw distance so I only see what I unpack. That is faster then crashing all the time. Just unpack and go home for trying on stuff.

But as others said, it can be SL just acting up.

[Orca Flotta]

I LOVE Firestorm but she is being a brat right now.. sigh.

A girl won't become the head honcho of a project run 99% by socially handicapped nerd guys when she plays the nice girl all the time. You gotta be a real **bleep** to get there in the first place. And I mean **bleep** in the most positive way.

In that TV interview (can't find the url right now) I found her very nice, accessible and open. But all that doesn't matter; Jessica Lyon could be the meanest meanie in the world, it still won't matter. Why? Because she knows her stuffz inside out and she surely knows what she's talking about. Only that counts, for when Jessica says DON'T CLEAR CACHE I tend to believe her and not a bunch of wannabe experts in some forum.

[Sephina Frostbite]

---

Marianne Little wrote:

I have problems with the last Firestorm Viewers too. So I have switched to the official viewer with Starlight skin added on. That really helped so the crude official viewer feels smoother.

All the time I have more than one viewer installed. ATM I have 4: The LL official viewer, Cool VL Viewer, Firestorm, Nirans. I use them for differnt purposes. Firestorm was what I used most, Niran for quality pictures, Cool for a rock steady viewer but the interface is old. The official viewer is feeling better as said, I will use it until it's a more stabile FS version.

I would go to a sandbox and open your stuff. You can also type in Hatton when you log in again. It's a sim with only water and it's easy for the computer since it does not have to struggle with loading. Well, sometimes too many avatars teleport into Hatton so I must load them, but then I walk into a corner and lower my draw distance so I only see what I unpack. That is faster then crashing all the time. Just unpack and go home for trying on stuff.

But as others said, it can be SL just acting up.

---

I would have thought that but it only happens when I am in my home. I didnt want to go back to the LL viewer, its so slow compared to firestorm but what can a gal do.

[GothGirl Demonia]

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Sephina Frostbite wrote:

My whole 3 years of sl Ive been told over and over clear your cache now today I was told never clear your cache... um what??? Whats your thoughts?

---

Depends if you have a really big hard drive, and only hang out on a few sims/areas then you don't really need to clear often it really depends how much time you spend in SL how much asset data you load into your cache if you load over 5 Gigs of data yeah you might want to clear it especially as time goes by maybe once a month or a week depending on what your need is.

[Nova Convair]

---

Shansi Kenin wrote:

 

I clear mine one time a month then log into linden viewer as anything in inventory lost by firestorm reappears:smileyhappy:

---

I never ever get any troubles here but there is one thing I didn't mention.

I have separate caches. Every alt has a different cache per viewer of course. That means for example: 3 viewers and 2 avatars = 6 cache folders. That requires separated viewer configuration files per avatar so it's not a trivial setup.

Separated caches plus a working network connection seem to guarantee me zero problems.

I didn't test if this efforts are still necessary but seeing the constant complains and whining in many threads makes me keeping up this configuration. And: none of my avatars has any cache problems under any viewer and therefore I never clear any cache.

 

[Qie Niangao]

There is a maddening amount of both superstition and wishful thinking on this topic.

The worst superstition, I suppose, is that clearing cache will decrease lag. In practice, that never, ever works. (In theory, it could work but only for truly vast cache sizes, only for the individual who cleared cache, only after they again reload cache, and only at the expense of everyone else. So it would be the very last thing you'd want anybody to do in a laggy crowded setting.)

On the other hand, the idea that one should never clear cache is purely wishful thinking about the quality of the viewer cache. It is crap. It has always been crap, and was at one point even worse crap than it is today, but it's still crap. The cache still gets corrupted at random, for no discernible reason, far too often to warrant discouraging anybody from clearing cache at the drop of a hat. (Frankly, I'd guess that most viewer caches are already corrupted within an hour of first use, but the corruption goes unnoticed most of the time.)

It would be one thing if the cache, uncorrupted, was terrifically efficient at saving re-fetches, but it's not even good at that because the algorithm is both simplistic and buggy, often re-fetching the same stuff over and over right away.

[Freya Mokusei]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

There is a maddening amount of both superstition and wishful thinking on this topic.

The worst superstition, I suppose, is that clearing cache will decrease lag. In practice, that never, ever works. (In

theory

, it could work but

only

for truly vast cache sizes, 

only

 for the individual who cleared cache,

only

after they again reload cache, and

only

at the expense of everyone else. So it would be the very last thing you'd want anybody to do in a laggy crowded setting.)

On the other hand, the idea that one should never clear cache is purely wishful thinking about the quality of the viewer cache. It is crap. It has always been crap, and was at one point even worse crap than it is today, but it's still crap. The cache still gets corrupted at random, for no discernible reason, far too often to warrant discouraging anybody from clearing cache at the drop of a hat. (Frankly, I'd guess that most viewer caches are already corrupted within an hour of first use, but the corruption goes unnoticed most of the time.)

It would be one thing if the cache, uncorrupted, was terrifically efficient at saving re-fetches, but it's not even good at that because the algorithm is both simplistic and buggy, often re-fetching the same stuff over and over right away.

---

Fantastic post, Qie! ALL OF THIS.

Clearing cache can be useful, but (much like every other way to improve your SL), it's not capable of fixing 100% of problems, and it can make quite a few things worse. This inconsistancy seems to be what causes most of the difficulty in understanding when to clear cache, because of the flurry of activity that takes place while a cache repopulates.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Freya Mokusei wrote:

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

There is a maddening amount of both superstition and wishful thinking on this topic.

The worst superstition, I suppose, is that clearing cache will decrease lag. In practice, that never, ever works. (In

theory

, it could work but

only

for truly vast cache sizes, 

only

 for the individual who cleared cache,

only

after they again reload cache, and

only

at the expense of everyone else. So it would be the very last thing you'd want anybody to do in a laggy crowded setting.)

On the other hand, the idea that one should never clear cache is purely wishful thinking about the quality of the viewer cache. It is crap. It has always been crap, and was at one point even worse crap than it is today, but it's still crap. The cache still gets corrupted at random, for no discernible reason, far too often to warrant discouraging anybody from clearing cache at the drop of a hat. (Frankly, I'd guess that most viewer caches are already corrupted within an hour of first use, but the corruption goes unnoticed most of the time.)

It would be one thing if the cache, uncorrupted, was terrifically efficient at saving re-fetches, but it's not even good at that because the algorithm is both simplistic and buggy, often re-fetching the same stuff over and over right away.

---

Fantastic post, Qie! ALL OF THIS.

Clearing cache can be useful, but (much like every other way to improve your SL), it's not capable of fixing 100% of problems, and it can make quite a few things worse. This inconsistancy seems to be what causes most of the difficulty in understanding when to clear cache, because of the flurry of activity that takes place while a cache repopulates.

---

The problem has been and still is that people use Clearing Cache as a cache-all for dealing with problems.  And even if doing it gives the appearance of having fixed a problem, most of the time they really have no way of knowing that clearing it was what fixed their problem.

It is a situation where correlation does not always equal causation.

After all, how many times have we seen people come here and say, "I cleared my cache but am still having this problem."

While having problems can be very frustrating at times, staying patient when dealing with them is important.  That is why I have a modus operendi which I stated above.  I can't guarantee that it will always work, but I have a very high success rate with it. 

Whatever a person may choose to do I say, always check Grid Status first. 

[Erik Verity]

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Sephina Frostbite wrote:

My whole 3 years of sl Ive been told over and over clear your cache now today I was told never clear your cache... um what??? Whats your thoughts?

---

There is a good reason for that. It wasn't that long ago that Second Life still had it published to clear your cache approx. every couple of weeks (something like that) as a matter of routine maintenance, and depending on how much time you spent in-world. Although that publication seems to be gone, (I can't find it now), their troubleshooting guide still will have you ensure your computer isn't the problem, then lists clearing your viewer cache second only to a relog/reboot for viewer issues.

To make it more confusing, Firestorm published their advice to NOT clear your cache as part of any routine maintenance while the Second Life site still had that one up. They also claimed it should be a last resort for trying to repair a problem, and that it should be done only for texture issues - nothing else. They toned theirs down recently also - I don't see the last resort warning anymore and they included crashing as another symptom to warrant it.

One reason for the change is the developers claim to have viewers optimised more now to where there should not be a performance hit during the process of cycling out the old to make room for the new when your cache is full. I'm not sure if this is the same for all viewers or not, but I think it is at least for the modern versions. As long as there is no noticeable performance decline with a full cache, there really is no reason to do it routinely anymore - it will only cause (temporary) problems when nothing was broken in the first place.

As for if or when to clear cache when you DO have a problem, you can only take professionals' advice and mix it with your own personal case and experience. It also more common to have it near the top of the list of things to try when you are helping someone else who is having the problem. Cases in point:

Not SL related  -  I'll never forget how I was repeatedly having to call my ISP to get them to fix a problem. They ALWAYS want to start off with having you clear your browser cache, temporary files, virus favorite places, etc. This time I was giving the rep a hard time because I was doing a lot of work using history and temp files  to bring up hard to find data, and a comp. sci. student shouldn't have to go through this before getting them to do their job every time. However, when she wanted me to use a command prompt to flush DNS, the realization hit me right right between the eyes - she was 100% right. The specific web pages that had been refusing to load was not because of THEIR DNS servers but my own DNS cache was corrupt (and can then corrupt browser cache also). All I could do was apologize and let her do her job.

SL related  -  As part of volunteer staff at a help area in-world, we had guidelines where clearing cache was at the top of the list for dealing with residents who would come for help. All welcomed, but majority were new residents. It's very frustrating when they upgraded their internet and graphics and have worse problems or no improvement. When someone has searched out every (laggy) sim and mall they could find in record time, it can cause problems (besides needing virtual penicillin). Slow internet and lag (slow data transfer) is a  textbook cause of corrupt cache.

There are good reasons for cache clearing to be early in the steps to take when helping someone else:  you cannot rule it out unless it's cleared; It might not be the culprit as often as it used to be, but it's still one of the simple things you can try before more complicated procedures. When you've been in SL for good while, you know to keep fast internet connections. You have better graphics than newer residents realize they need. You probably avoid laggy sims. You are more familiar with your viewer all the way around.

[Shelby Silverspar]

bumped

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Shelby Silverspar wrote:

bumped

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Your bumping woke up LL, Shelby! Nice work!

;-)