Current Up To Date Debug Settings Reference Guide With Definitions

[Istelathis]

I like to look through the debug menu and try to figure out what everything does as well.  The UseEnergy one was interesting, I wonder if it has something to do with physics.  The closest answer I have found so far is on github, for one of the TPV and there is a comment "// force toggle to turn off, since sends message to simulator"

I found one comment that was kind of funny in response to an old article
"Wow…. that sure is a long list of debug settings. If I set UseEnergy to FALSE can I unplug my PC?"

As the others have said though, it is best not to push the buttons, no matter how tempting they may be.  

Edited February 16, 2022 by Istelathis

[Kathrine Jansma]

2 hours ago, Paulsian said:

Wonders did SL start that first and then get rid of it

Yes, the older versions of the offical viewer had Pie menus. But as usual options sometimes survive such minor transitions, when the Goddess of grepping isn't favourable that day.

[Ardy Lay]

Once upon a time, a deprecated debug setting was removed, a viewer was built, tested and released.  People downloaded and installed it.  It crashed.  A bug report was written and piled onto by many angry people.  People who had changed that deprecated debug setting from the default had an entry in their user settings file that caused the parser to crash the viewer when reading it.  I wonder if the current parser is more robust.  FLUFF WITH IT AND FIND OUT.  😉

[bigmoe Whitfield]

5 hours ago, Paulsian said:

this one is strange, how many grids does the official viewer have. I thought 2? After made to true logged out and back in did not notice any differences? 

 

Not strange,  there were a ton more test "grids" at one point in time,  they might be listed some place, but all were internal and only LL could access them, but they were listed since their viewer they used and it got included.  

[Ardy Lay]

I have seen Agni, Aditi, Aruna, Bharati, Chandra, Damballah, Danu, Durga, Ganga, Mitra, Mohini, Nandi, Parvati, Radha, Ravi, Siva, Shakti, Skanda, Soma, Uma, Vaak and Yami in SL Viewer grid selectors of days gone by.

[Monty Linden]

5 hours ago, Paulsian said:

Don't play with buttons  Got it. Sorry. 

Under no circumstances should you set InjectLagEffect to False.

[MarissaOrloff]

[Adamburp Adamczyk]

15 hours ago, Ardy Lay said:

I have seen Agni, Aditi, Aruna, Bharati, Chandra, Damballah, Danu, Durga, Ganga, Mitra, Mohini, Nandi, Parvati, Radha, Ravi, Siva, Shakti, Skanda, Soma, Uma, Vaak and Yami in SL Viewer grid selectors of days gone by.

but did you see Batman?

[KjartanEno]

16 hours ago, MarissaOrloff said:

[Jackson Redstar]

There are a few debug settings that can help for everyday use, but even a table listing all the debug settings is still mostly useless because they are still mostly meaningless unless you know the inner workings. And why the name 'debug' in the first place? seems they are more Functionality Settings lol

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Jackson Redstar said:

And why the name 'debug' in the first place? seems they are more Functionality Settings lol

I suspect that the word "debug" is there because quite a few of them really are settings that are meant to be toggled temporarily as someone is trying to figure out what's wrong with his own viewer or is doing testing during a UI upgrade.  As a scripter, I have a file of handy debug routines that I activate as I am designing a new HUD or whatnot, so that I can turn some functionality on/off selectively.

[Paulsian]

What concerns me is the possibility of one user scripting something to change another users debug settings. I've learned that anything is possible in SL. Maybe a way of allowing a user to lock the settings, and most importantly a way to set all approx. 1560 settings to default. Conditional formatting of them: if this setting is not default make it stand out. Show all debug settings that are not currently set to default setting. Or a way for users to extract the list of debug settings with their current settings and allow them to track their own settings. 

Are debug settings reset after a fresh install? If not that's probably a problem. 

[Rolig Loon]

5 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

What concerns me is the possibility of one user scripting something to change another users debug settings. I've learned that anything is possible in SL. Maybe a way of allowing a user to lock the settings, and most importantly a way to set all approx. 1560 settings to default. Conditional formatting of them: if this setting is not default make it stand out. Show all debug settings that are not currently set to default setting. Or a way for users to extract the list of debug settings with their current settings and allow them to track their own settings. 

That is a non-worry.  You can't write a script to change debug settings.  You can't even look to see what settings someone else might have.

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Rolig Loon

[Paulsian]

In one of those 1560 debug settings there could be one that could be flipped on via script allowing others to be flipped on?

[Paulsian]

I would like to know what every debug setting means from a Linden, not wiki maintained by volunteers, and I would like to know that the ones that are no longer in use are locked from being tampered with and re purposed. Really hard to find any department within LL with any form of accountability or moral & ethical standards. It's very frustrating to be a client. 

Edited February 19, 2022 by Paulsian

[Rolig Loon]

9 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

In one of those 1560 debug settings there could be one that could be flipped on via script allowing others to be flipped on?

Nope.  LSL scripts cannot do anything at all to debug settings.

2 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

I would like to know what every debug setting means from a Linden, not wiki maintained by volunteers, and I would like to know that the ones that are no longer in use are locked from being tampered with and re purposed. 

Good luck with that.  🤓 

BTW, That list on the wiki is just a reference for information. Editing there does not affect the debug settings themselves. The settings are in app_settings/settings.xml in your viewer.  Nobody else can edit the viewer in your computer.  If you are dumb enough to edit that file yourself, you probably deserve whatever happens next.

[Paulsian]

So lets say I'm in a public space with people playing media files on their little music players and the "music"/files goes into my viewers cache and from there a phantom file executes and the self destructs and after that all the notes on my desktop are taken and a secondary computer is hacked and my iphone on my network is hacked. You don't think someone is able to change a viewer file? 

I'm speaking about going to an event in world step on a transparent scripted object having that change debug settings without going into the actual files. or bumping into someone with a scripted object, or they bumping into you. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

 

[Rowan Amore]

How do you even sleep at night?

[Paulsian]

I have to keep reminding myself, nobody cares, nobody cares, nobody cares. Sorry for my mannerism and microaggressions. I just wanted a simple current list of debug settings. Nothing is ever simple in this world.  

[Nick0678]

21 minutes ago, Paulsian said:

I just wanted a simple current list of debug settings.

for which viewer?

[Solar Legion]

Ah yes, not being paranoid = not caring ...

 

[Istelathis]

@PaulsianBack in the day, we had telephone modems that would convert sounds into data our computers could use, we also stored data that way on audio cassettes for computers like the Commodore.  The thing is, we would need to have a piece of hardware or software to converts those sounds - the viewers we use would have to be designed specifically to do that.  I doubt our viewers would have such capabilities as they would serve no real function and only introduce a lot of vulnerabilities.

If you would like to learn more, search for articles regarding modulation and demodulation to understand how it works.  I don't think you have very much to worry about audio being played in Second Life, at worst, I have read that they may gain access to your IP address but even then they would have to have their own server running that media  through SL to find it.  You could turn off media from in SL, and they wouldn't have the ability to see it.  About the only thing they would normally be able to do with your IP address, that I am aware of now, is DDOS you or know where your service provider is located.  Modern OSs are pretty resilient, and your computer would probably be safe unless it had already been compromised or you opened a bunch of ports and allowed services that people could exploit.. That is going in way over my level of knowledge though, hopefully someone more knowledgeable will step in and provide more information or correct me where I may have been wrong.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Istelathis

[Paulsian]

1 hour ago, Nick0678 said:

1 hour ago, Paulsian said:

I just wanted a simple current list of debug settings.

for which viewer?

A current updated debug settings list for the only viewer I've ever used. The official viewer. 

[Paulsian]

6 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

@PaulsianBack in the day, we had telephone modems that would convert sounds into data our computers could use, we also stored data that way on audio cassettes for computers like the Commodore.  The thing is, we would need to have a piece of hardware or software to converts those sounds - the viewers we use would have to be designed specifically to do that.  I doubt our viewers would have such capabilities as they would serve no real function and only introduce a lot of vulnerabilities.

If you would like to learn more, search for articles regarding modulation and demodulation to understand how it works.  I don't think you have very much to worry about audio being played in Second Life, at worst, I have read that they may gain access to your IP address but even then they would have to have their own server running that media  through SL to find it.  You could turn off media from in SL, and they wouldn't have the ability to see it.  About the only thing they would normally be able to do with your IP address, that I am aware of now, is DDOS you or know where your service provider is located.  Modern OSs are pretty resilient, and your computer would probably be safe unless it had already been compromised or you opened a bunch of ports and allowed services that people could exploit.. That is going in way over my level of knowledge though, hopefully someone more knowledgeable will step in and provide more information or correct me where I may have been wrong.

Edited 4 minutes ago by Istelathis

After it happened, my objective was to figure out how. Open your cache for SL and monitor it while you are standing within listening distance to other users playing music. I was able to screen shot the name of it and after it was reported to organizations that specialize in this I took a sledge hammer to both computers and my iphone.