Blacklisted (permanent) items keep clearing

[Keeva Starlight]

When I go to clear my cache location, I just click on "clear cache"

Now I see that all the items that I blacklisted (permanently) are back.

I was reading this wiki page and I understand most of it.  It's nice to know that I can delete things separately rather than just click on that "clear cache" once.  I just randomly added 3 things to the permanent blacklist and I'm trying to figure out which files those are, so that I know next time which type of files the blacklisted ones are.  I want to avoid clearing my permanent blacklisted items.

So when I open the location, I know that I can just remove the textures file (sometimes things on the land are gray for about 5-10 minutes, even with the draw distance down.  Aside from that, it runs good.

Does deleting my browser history (not on SL, just regular internet browsers) and/or using CCleaner effect this?  I looked into them and I don't see anything specifically for firestorm (or SL in general)

I have Windows 10, I look for updates often.  I use Google Chrome.  I have a basic graphics card (it gets the job done, I'll probably buy a nice one soon)

[Nalates Urriah]

I'm not sure what you mean by "Now I see that all the items that I blacklisted (permanently) are back." Back where? And what kind of blacklisting are you doing?

Why are you clearing your cache? The wiki link you provided goes to a page that says basically don't clear cache.

That items are gray for 5 to 10 minutes is likely because you are clearing the cache. Don't. I think the wiki page is very clear one should ONLY clear cache if there is a known texture or object file problem. Do you think you are having such problems?

Cache files rarely corrupt. The textures and objects transfer via the error correcting HTTProtocol. So, viewer crashes are the more common cause of corrupted files and the viewer has to crash as the file is being written. A rare thing. I suppose, you could have a bad enough connection the viewer was having a hard time assembling the files from error correction data. But, I think that way unlikely and file corruption would be a small problem compared to what you would be experiencing in lag and disconnects.

The lets be sure we are talking about viewer and browser caches as seperate things. The wiki page you pointed to is about the viewer caches. Browser caches are a term we use to refer to Internet browser caches. These are unrelated and separate things. Clearing one or the other has no effect on the other.

Windows 10 has its own caches and those are hard to get to and best left alone. They are separate from viewer and browser caches.

If you visit the SL websites, like this forum, your browser will have history and cached pages from the sites.

With CCleaner you can totally destroy a computer. As of Windows 10 all the stuff one does with CC is built into Windows. Such programs are made for people that do some word processing, email, and Internet browsing. Once one moves to more sophisticated use of their computer CC is likely to be more of a detiment than a help. 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Nalates Urriah
Added more

[Keeva Starlight]

On 7/23/2018 at 6:27 PM, Nalates Urriah said:

I'm not sure what you mean by "Now I see that all the items that I blacklisted (permanently) are back." Back where? And what kind of blacklisting are you doing?

Why are you clearing your cache? The wiki link you provided goes to a page that says basically don't clear cache.

That items are gray for 5 to 10 minutes is likely because you are clearing the cache. Don't. I think the wiki page is very clear one should ONLY clear cache if there is a known texture or object file problem. Do you think you are having such problems?

Cache files rarely corrupt. The textures and objects transfer via the error correcting HTTProtocol. So, viewer crashes are the more common cause of corrupted files and the viewer has to crash as the file is being written. A rare thing. I suppose, you could have a bad enough connection the viewer was having a hard time assembling the files from error correction data. But, I think that way unlikely and file corruption would be a small problem compared to what you would be experiencing in lag and disconnects.

The lets be sure we are talking about viewer and browser caches as seperate things. The wiki page you pointed to is about the viewer caches. Browser caches are a term we use to refer to Internet browser caches. These are unrelated and separate things. Clearing one or the other has no effect on the other.

Windows 10 has its own caches and those are hard to get to and best left alone. They are separate from viewer and browser caches.

If you visit the SL websites, like this forum, your browser will have history and cached pages from the sites.

With CCleaner you can totally destroy a computer. As of Windows 10 all the stuff one does with CC is built into Windows. Such programs are made for people that do some word processing, email, and Internet browsing. Once one moves to more sophisticated use of their computer CC is likely to be more of a detiment than a help. 

The items "objects" that were blacklisted, are now back.  They are no longer blacklisted.  It was permanent, but that list cleared.  I know it was set to permanent.  I have done temporary blacklisting and I fully understand that if you leave a region then come back, that the items on the temp list have returned and you can see them.

I clear the viewer cache because it always takes long to load, even if I've been to that area for weeks.  Sometimes it loads faster after clearing the viewer cache, but in the end it takes too long.  Maybe I just need a better graphics card and not just the one that came with my PC.  That or, it really is something with the viewer cache(?) It doesn't seem to matter which region I'm in either.
At worst, it takes about 15 minutes for most things to appear, even with the draw-distance down to 30.  I've experimented a few times and having the DD (draw distance )either up or down does not seem to make a difference.

CCleaner has always worked for me (I use it about once a week or once a month), this is the first time I'm reading that it can destroy things on the PC.... oh.  Well, darn it.  OK I uninstalled it  that might have been the issue.  I won't know for certain until later.

[Alyona Su]

The OP is referring to the DERENDER option in most viewers, It could be a Firestorm issue, though I'm not sure. I've used firestorm for years an have derendered LOTS unsightly stuff, though clearing cache has never brought them back. However, I now use Catznip, myself, and haven't used Firestorm in a long time, so if it's a Firestorm issue it could be a bug in an update. The only way to know is to ask someone else using the same version to try what you did. Otherwise is may be a local issue on your computer system.

[Nalates Urriah]

13 hours ago, Minteroo said:

I clear the viewer cache because it always takes long to load, even if I've been to that area for weeks.  Sometimes it loads faster after clearing the viewer cache, but in the end it takes too long.  Maybe I just need a better graphics card and not just the one that came with my PC.  That or, it really is something with the viewer cache(?) It doesn't seem to matter which region I'm in either.

At worst, it takes about 15 minutes for most things to appear, even with the draw-distance down to 30.  I've experimented a few times and having the DD (draw distance )either up or down does not seem to make a difference.

Caches do not load... they lay there on the storage device until a file in the cache is needed. Then only that file is loaded. So, I doubt you see any slow down from a large cache. The viewer caches are indexed. So, file retrieval from a 1,000 files or a million files only varies by a couple of milliseconds at most. I have a 4GB FS cache on SSD and a 4GB LL in a RAM drive and a number of other viewers' caches in the 10GB size on a mechanical drive. Regardless of which cache is in use. the viewers launch and come up at about the same speed.

Larger caches are faster. The current limit of 10GB is to be removed in the next cache redesign. Larger, faster caches are coming.

Scene render is noticeably faster with the LL Viewers using the Ram Drive cache. But, the viewer caching is pretty lame so it is not consistent. The Lindens have started an update project for the cache. Which is good because some scene renders for places that are already in the cache are way slow, whether HD, SSD, or RAM Drive. 

What is consistent is that an empty cache on my machine is absolutely the slowest at rendering a scene. Especially if I visit a region no one else in my area has visited and I hit a cold CDN cache.

Firestorm has a progressive load feature... Preferences->Firestorm->Extras->Enable progressive draw distance stepping... Try adjusting it.

What size is your cache and where does it live?

15 minutes for a scene to render is a long time. I think 5 minutes is a long time. However, the video card is not the likely problem. If textures load, get clear, and then go blurry and repeat the process then you have texture-thrashing. A newer video card can help with that problem.

Scene render is dependent on your cache, network connection, and disk speed. The CPU and Graphics Card have a significant effect on render speed once all the parts are there. If you have good FPS (>15 FPS) and the scene is slow rendering look in the Texture Console (Ctrl-Shift-3) to see what is happening.

While watching the Texture Console also watch the viewer stats, Advanced->Render->Object Cache Hit Rate. You'll get an idea how it is or isn't working.

Edited July 26, 2018 by Nalates Urriah

[Alwin Alcott]

just thinking... was it really a cache cleaning... or clean install...

[Coffee Pancake]

On 23/07/2018 at 6:47 PM, Minteroo said:

When I go to clear my cache location, I just click on "clear cache"

Now I see that all the items that I blacklisted (permanently) are back.

If clearing your cache empties your blacklist then that's a bug, report it to whichever viewer you use.

56 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Firestorm has a progressive load feature... Preferences->Firestorm->Extras->Enable progressive draw distance stepping... Try adjusting it.

Try turning it off and never using it. It is a technically terrible solution that is hard in the region and your viewer. Just lower draw distance and be patient.

[Nalates Urriah]

3 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Try turning it off and never using it. It is a technically terrible solution that is hard in the region and your viewer. Just lower draw distance and be patient.

It isn't hard on the viewer... it breaks down the viewer's workload to smaller chunks. Which allows the viewer to spread out its load and concentrate on what you need to see first. Progressive DD Stepping is a good thing for the viewer.

The idea can throw extra load on the servers. The Progressive Draw Distance HUD's in the marketplace do that. They improve the individual user's experience at the cost of degrading server performance for everyone.

There was a great deal of debate about progressive draw distance HUD's a few years back. The Firestorm team was in the middle of it. I forget what they did to mitigate the problem. I think the way they avoided asking the server to supply an interest list multiple times was to get the max DD list and then handle downloading only the nearest objects viewer side then work their way out. The final result was reducing the region PEAK server load... well... spreading it out over time, lowering the peak, without requiring additional work from the servers.

Then a bunch of Linden work was done on the Interest List and how items in the list are downloaded. The effect was to have the LL viewer do something similar to the FS Progressive DD.

With the addition of CDN services the load on the servers was further reduced. So, the progressive DD in FS shouldn't be much of an issue. It was designed to offset the impact of marketplace HUD's.

We could probably ask Whirly about the current state of Progressive DD Stepping in Firestorm and get a definitive answer on how it works now.

[Whirly Fizzle]

On 7/23/2018 at 11:47 PM, Minteroo said:

When I go to clear my cache location, I just click on "clear cache"

Now I see that all the items that I blacklisted (permanently) are back.

Blacklisted items are not stored in the viewer cache.
Clearing cache has no effect on your blacklist.

 

On 7/23/2018 at 11:47 PM, Minteroo said:

I just randomly added 3 things to the permanent blacklist and I'm trying to figure out which files those are, so that I know next time which type of files the blacklisted ones are.  I want to avoid clearing my permanent blacklisted items.

Blacklisted items are stored in a file named asset_blacklist.xml located in the viewer settings folder.
Presuming you are on Windows, the exact location of the file is: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64\AvatarFirstname_Lastname
Note if you're using the 32bit version of Firestorm, the Firestorm folder is named Firestorm, not Firestorm_x64.

You can open asset_blacklist.xml in a text editor.

[Whirly Fizzle]

On 7/26/2018 at 7:53 AM, Minteroo said:

I clear the viewer cache because it always takes long to load, even if I've been to that area for weeks.  Sometimes it loads faster after clearing the viewer cache, but in the end it takes too long. 

Are you using Webroot antivirus?

[Keeva Starlight]

On 7/27/2018 at 9:52 PM, Whirly Fizzle said:

Blacklisted items are not stored in the viewer cache.
Clearing cache has no effect on your blacklist.

 

Blacklisted items are stored in a file named asset_blacklist.xml located in the viewer settings folder.
Presuming you are on Windows, the exact location of the file is: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64\AvatarFirstname_Lastname
Note if you're using the 32bit version of Firestorm, the Firestorm folder is named Firestorm, not Firestorm_x64.

You can open asset_blacklist.xml in a text editor.

Can I back those up and then add them back when updating the latest version?  I'm lost on how to do that  
I do a clean install and I end up losing it.  I only end up saving my chat logs because I went with the older video that talks waaaayy too fast (you need to slow down the speed of the video to watch.  It gives me anxiety just listening to her)  I can't include it, it takes up too much space on this post.

It's so weird how these little things can cause anxiety. 

 

[Lindal Kidd]

1 hour ago, Minteroo said:

Can I back those up and then add them back when updating the latest version?  I'm lost on how to do that  
I do a clean install and I end up losing it.  I only end up saving my chat logs because I went with the older video that talks waaaayy too fast (you need to slow down the speed of the video to watch.  It gives me anxiety just listening to her)  I can't include it, it takes up too much space on this post.

It's so weird how these little things can cause anxiety. 

 

Yes, you can.  This procedure can be used for ANY file.

1. Browse to the file.  In this case, it's in C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64\AvatarFirstname_Lastname   NOTE:  Appdata is "hidden" by default.  You can make hidden files and folders visible.  In the Search bar in your Windows taskbar, type "show hidden" and follow the prompts to the Control Panel setting "show hidden files and folders"

   2.  Right click the file.  Choose Copy.

   3.  Browse to somewhere else.  Your Documents folder, or the Desktop is a handy spot for putting things temporarily.  Right click on the desktop, or in your chosen folder, and select Paste.  The file will appear there.

   4.  Now do your clean install.

   5.  After your clean install, find the NEW file asset_blacklist.xml, right where you found the original one.

   6.  Right click this file, select Rename.  Give it a name like "asset_blacklist.xtra"  You may be cautioned that changing a file's type may affect its operation.  Tell Windows that it's OK.

   7.  Find the asset_blacklist.xml file that you saved, and drag it to the folder.

   8.  Now start the viewer.  If all is well, and your blacklisted objects are the same as they were before, you can now safely delete the file you renamed. 

   9.  If anything appears to be amiss, you can remove the old file you substituted, and change the name of the asset_blacklist.xtra file back to asset_blacklist.xml.  Your new install will then work, but you won't have the old blacklisted objects.