Warning! Don't Let This Happen to You!

[Prokofy Neva]

See this discussion for background.

It now seems clear that there is a random bug that accidentally deletes folders and puts them in Trash -- and then may give you a warning message from a new feature, called "Warning: Your Trash is Overflowing". If you then flush the trash, you will never get back folders that in fact you may not have intended to delete at all. It's random.

I and a few others have fallen victim to this and we really would like to see action from Linden Lab on it, but as this may be slow in coming, prevention is the only cure now.

If you're like me, you had never heard of that new feature (which was put in because some people don't delete trash for ages and then have trouble logging in or crash). If you're like me, you regularly delete your trash to avoid confusion.

And I carefully studied my trash after I got that message and was puzzled -- there were two dozen items in it at the most and it wasn't overflowing. There were some copies of a dock, some folders for received items -- that is generally the only time I'd put a folder in trash. I didn't see my most precious folder of 15,000 items in sub-folders (!) called !!B&B for my rentals. Believe me, had I seen a folder like that in trash, I'd have pulled it out.

Read the thread linked here to see another person had this experience, saw a folder of *her* many precious items and retrieved it just in time.

But I didn't see it for some odd reason, and like a dutiful citizen, flushed the trash. Then whoops, I saw my inventory went from 97,000 to 83,000 and is likely never to be retrieved.

So if you see message about Trash Overflowing, do not delete your trash.

Study your folders in the main view, not filtered for "Recent". Pull out anything you didn't intend to throw out.

Even if you don't see anything, report it to the Lindens to examine in case the folder getting deleted takes some kind of hidden form. That way if it is flushed it's on them and not you.

At this point, I am no longer making sub-folders within a sub-folder of "Objects" as that creates a single point of failure.

I'm making folders directly sub to "Objects" itself, which is a system folder that won't be deleted.

It's been recommended to me to distribute my sub folders in fact over multiple system folders to create more security from loss but you have to balance loss with inconvenience.

 

Edited April 23, 2017 by Prokofy Neva

[Persephone Emerald]

I got this warning recently & found my sub-folder for "Historical & RP" clothing had accidentally gone into the Trash. I thought I must have accidentally drug it there, since I had been deleting clothing. I was glad I got the warning in time to rescue this folder. - *Always check your Trash before emptying it.* - I've been warned before that having too many sub-folders creates the chance of some being accidentally deleted by the system. This happened before with my "Shoes" folder. I still need my sub-folder system though, so I'm trying to get rid of more inventory in general. 50,000 seems like a pretty safe amount, but I'm not quite down to that & I still have many unopened packages.

[DorianDiaz]

A real nightmare. Specially for shopping-lover girls. That's why I took an advice from a friend of me, and it's put in boxes everything you are not gonna use in around 6 months. Like an "attic". This way you help your inventory to stay "healthy"

[Bree Giffen]

That is one of the strangest bugs I've heard of. I don't normally get my trash filled enough to get a warning so this would definitely raise a red flag.  Good to know.

[Prokofy Neva]

@DorianDiaz Yeah, I do that -- tons of it. All the holiday stuff and less used houses and so on go on boxes. But they can get lost too. And they are hard to manipulate. Put more than 20 things in a box, and they won't load so you can see them easily. It's not really a good solution for someone trying to constantly circulate lots of stock in something like rentals which is what I have.

Casper and other vendors let us know that copies of things are held on line easily and re-delivery instantly in most cases UNLESS the merchant stops using that system. The Lindens need a system like this where you can opt to keep inventory online easily, where entire pages online are easier to sort. They also need a system to restore inventory. This isn't a system to give you doubles of non-copy items (which is why it doesn't get done) which could be abused. It's a system you pay for that in the event of loss, and proof it is no longer inw inventory or owned by you inworld rezzed out, you get a redelivery.

[Neural Blankes]

Lovely.  So not only can people hobble along fighting with the asset servers usual antics (especially this week), now we have to worry about it just up deciding to nuke entire folders?

At least someone had the foresight to put in a warning before the system just arbitrarily deletes things.

[Marianne Little]

Oh. No.

I had that warning three times a week ago. Two weeks maybe. But I was doing a major cleanup and trashed 10 000 items or so. At least I think I had control on what I put in trash.

I have missed some sim landscaping items. I wondered where they were, Did I search for the correct name?  Is it still another grid we can log into and search for missing items? No transfer should be possible to replace if the merchant didn't leave SL.

[Sin Speculaas]

Yesterday this happened to me ...I was a folder putting a pick into a sub folder when I got the message that my inventory was overflowing  (I got this message 2 times in a short span) I have gotten this message in the past when I was cleaning my inventory so thought nothing of it and clicked to delete ...short time later was looking for the folder it was gone I searched and searched ...reclogged...talked to live chat she search and asked me to use the sl viewer and come in go to a debug area and then come in with FS ..did all she asked still no folder ..I submitted a support ticket yesterday but have not heard yes...this folder was a huge one and I prolly had hundreds if not thousands invested in it ...if anyone has any helpful suggestions I would be grateful

 

BTW I'm not a newbie  I have been in sl for going on 12 years

Edited April 24, 2017 by Sin Speculaas

[Prokofy Neva]

@Sin Speculaas Yes, I got the message several times, too, which is why I thought I better flush the trash to stop the messages and in case it was going to create problems. And I looked in the trash but didn't see anything which was odd. Then I was out 15,000 items.

I' not a newbie either -- nearly 12 years myself. I know how to be careful with deletions, to check trash, to keep trash empty, to check folders. All that careful filing away in sub-folders which I thought was "good hygiene" for naught : (

I couldn't get logged on to Hippo! or whatever you are referencing, but I'm not sure that will help at all.

I submitted a ticket on 4/21 and it is now 4/24 and I have heard nothing. Meanwhile, they may have flushed their servers and it is hopelessly gone.

I can only urge all of you in this thread and others who are in with the Lindens to try to get their attention to this issue. File a JIRA. I can't do this, I am blocked from the JIRA. I've written to Patch Linden but it's not his area. Those of you who hang out in office hours with techie Lindens -- please mention this.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Prokofy Neva

[Aislin Ceawlin]

I got the same message a while back. Since I hadn't emptied my trash in, ohhhh, FOREVER, I went ahead and clicked. Thankfully, I'm not missed anything important yet. Actually, now that I think about it, there are a few houses that I KNOW I didn't delete that are missing, but I guess it could be worse.

[angeoco]

I often get the "trash overflowing" message, but in my case it's totally justified. I'm in the habit of collecting huge amounts of freebies and deleting most of them. I have noticed things going missing, but never anything major, and can't rule out that it could have been my fault.

[Chase01]

I haven't noticed an issue with my inventory but I appreciate the heads up. In any case where something went missing it was as a result of something I did to the best of my knowledge but thankfully I caught it before deletion.  -we desperately need a thumbs up emote on hotkey!- ( ( *• ̀ω•́ )b

Just as an FYI you can adjust the default amount required to receive the notice in the "Advanced Menu" / Debug Settings and then typing inventorytrashMaxCapacity.

[Prokofy Neva]

@Chase01 yes, I had received that advice in another thread. But if I had never even HEARD of this feature (it is new, and there was never a blog post about it to my knowledge) I wouldn't know what to set it for. And setting it for X or Y is irrelevant if what happens is that folders get pushed into it randomly, or even if on accident, but not visible, or even if by accident, and visible but not realized -- irrelevant to the size set, you know?

[Chase01]

I mentioned the setting for those like me who don't want or need a reminder of when to delete trash. ( ‘-’)人(ﾟ_ﾟ )

Edited April 25, 2017 by Chase01

[Phil Deakins]

1 hour ago, Chase01 said:

You're also assuming that the two issues are related when we don't know for a fact that they are.

The idea that she noticed the missing inventory right after she emptied the Trash was just a coincidence has already been suggested as a possibility but she ignored it. The missing folder with the tens of thousands of items in it could have been missing before the Trash was emptied, but hadn't been noticed. Prok has it firmly in her head that she deleted the folder herself by emptying the Trash, and that's all there is to it. She may be right, and she may be wrong. As you said, it's not known.

What she said happened is that she got the message several times (I think it was several times), so she looked in her Trash and found ~20 items in it. The number keeps changing but it doesn't matter because it's always very small. None of the items was the folder that's gone missing. Right there, something is obviously not right. The Trash is obviously not overflowing. It cannot be overflowing in that circumstance unless (1) a folder in the Trash contains an enormous number of items, perhaps in a sub-folder, or (2) the messages were generated as the Trash was being prepared for sending and a huge amount hadn't yet arrived. Either way, something looked very wrong, #2 was also posted as a possibility but was also ignored. A third possibility is that she was in the Recent tab but thought she was looking at the Trash in the My Inventory tab. She has admitted that that's a possibility.

Whatever happened, it looked wrong, and the best thing would have been to examine it much more closely before permanently deleting what appeared to be just a few items that couldn't trigger the 'overflowing' message. I'm not suggesting that it was her own fault. If the missing folder had found its way into the Trash, then it could have been accidental or a system flaw. All I'm saying is that emptying the trash in the circumstances described was not the best way to handle it.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 25, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Pamela Galli]

3 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

Whatever happened, it looked wrong, and the best thing would have been to examine it much more closely before permanently deleting what appeared to be just a few items that couldn't trigger the 'overflowing' message. I'm not suggesting that it was her own fault. If the missing folder had found its way into the Trash, then it could have been accidental or a system flaw. All I'm saying is that emptying the trash in the circumstances described was not the best way to handle it.

I got the message, and as I mentioned, in response I deleted a few of my oldest items. I don't ever completely delete the trash because There is no benefit to it, and great risk. When I noticed my Living Room folder in the trash it gave me a shock, but there was no risk I would delete it before noticing it. Inventory trash is not like the trash can in my kitchen, it can pile up to several thousand items without any effect whatsoever. 

[Artorius Constantine]

Sin, and anyone else who has lost items.

I got hit by this and lost a folder containing a lot of projects and scripts. This was a "projects under construction" folder so had a lot of half finished stuff and supplies to build with. Pricey folder to lose and a lot of work gone for good. I was not able to save most of it but I was able to recover some on my own. If you go to the Testing grid the "Lost" folder ,may still exist where it was and you can copy scripts or textures out to your desktop then re-import them to the main grid.

If you can save any objects as DAE or mesh in the test grid you can re-import those too.

The testing grid updates inventory irregularly and you can't save actual objects there but you can recover some things like scripts and NC's and get a list of exactly what got lost.

Edited April 25, 2017 by Artorius Constantine

[Neural Blankes]

To avoid false positives in this, I would like to point out that, as many of the older people will know, if you have an item or folder selected in your inventory, and hit the "backspace" key, it will, without warning or popup, put that item or folder into the trash.

This may seem innocuous, but it has caused problems for me in the past.

This is functionality I have wished for a long time would be removed.

[LittleMe Jewell]

8 minutes ago, Neural Blankes said:

To avoid false positives in this, I would like to point out that, as many of the older people will know, if you have an item or folder selected in your inventory, and hit the "backspace" key, it will, without warning or popup, put that item or folder into the trash.

This may seem innocuous, but it has caused problems for me in the past.

This is functionality I have wished for a long time would be removed.

Yikes - that could explain a few things for me.

[Whirly Fizzle]

11 minutes ago, Neural Blankes said:

To avoid false positives in this, I would like to point out that, as many of the older people will know, if you have an item or folder selected in your inventory, and hit the "backspace" key, it will, without warning or popup, put that item or folder into the trash.

This may seem innocuous, but it has caused problems for me in the past.

This is functionality I have wished for a long time would be removed.

Deleting with backspace should pop up the usual "Delete selected item?" notification unless you ticked the "Do not show me again" box.
I just tested on the LL viewer & Firestorm & I got the "Delete selected item?"  prompt on both viewers.

[Neural Blankes]

It may be tied in with the standard deletion message then.  This is something I've dealt with for quite a long time, and being sensitive to it, I know i wouldn't dismiss that window completely.  Using the delete button however, that I would dismiss.  I'll log in this evening and test it out.  Thank you for pointing it out.

[Whirly Fizzle]

It's the "Confirm before deleting items" notification on both the LL viewer and Firestorm.

 

[Neural Blankes]

Ok, so I logged in to confirm:  This notification, if turned off for using the delete key, also turns it off for use of the backspace key.

This is why I have never received the notification when using backspace.  So if anyone has checked the "do not show me this again" box when using the delete key, they are also confirming the use of the backspace key.

I find that to be a problem.

[Torrie Mint]

I just checked my trash and found 2 folders with new clothes I just got 2 days ago and I did not delete them. Wont be emptying my trash anytime soon.

Edited April 26, 2017 by Torrie Mint
added little more info

[Chic Aeon]

9 hours ago, Artorius Constantine said:

Sin, and anyone else who has lost items.

I got hit by this and lost a folder containing a lot of projects and scripts. This was a "projects under construction" folder so had a lot of half finished stuff and supplies to build with. Pricey folder to lose and a lot of work gone for good. I was not able to save most of it but I was able to recover some on my own. If you go to the Testing grid the "Lost" folder ,may still exist where it was and you can copy scripts or textures out to your desktop then re-import them to the main grid.

If you can save any objects as DAE or mesh in the test grid you can re-import those too.

The testing grid updates inventory irregularly and you can't save actual objects there but you can recover some things like scripts and NC's and get a list of exactly what got lost.

I was thinking the same thing a day or so ago. I don't go to the beta grid any longer, my alt does all the testing. When they first instituted the "link" between grids it was a mess and I lost a LOT of stuff on Agni and it took me a week just to get my inventory working in any semblance of normalcy.  That being said, I "could" be helpful for scripts and textures.

It would SEEM like you could send full perm items to your alt(s), but unfortunately I had an occurrence where that did no good at all.  ALL instances (many different UUIDs) disappeared from the grid no matter who had them. So there must be a hierarchy in the database with the original item and then all the copies of that item. All very strange but definitely something is wrong (not new news but seemingly getting worse).

You COULD export any mesh you had made if needed. In theory you should have that on your hard drive -- anything recent anyway. I have considered Opensim a "cloud backup" for a couple of years. It has saved me a time or two for sure.