Slideshows stopped working.

[MarissaNL]

Hello,

I just returned from a 3 week holiday. When I logged in today, I noticed that all my slideshows stopped working (frozen on a single picture).
This is the slideshow that I am using: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/FooRoo-Picture-Slideshow-Image-slideshow-Smooth-Transitions/120372

Normally I can use the commands "/5 reset" and "/5 update". But those comments seems not to work anymore.
When I edit one of the slideshows, go to the content tab and 'reset the scripts", the "please wait" screen shows and it gets stuck there.

I bought as test a very simple slideshow from the market place and that works normally.

Anyone an idea what is going on here? Did something change during my holiday?

Thank you

 

[Qie Niangao]

Very unlikely anything has changed affecting scripts in this device at any point in the past decade. It's interesting that resetting the scripts gives a "'please wait' screen", which makes me wonder: how many scripts are in this object, and are they all in the same prim? Assuming there's more than one, what are their names? Can you try Recompiling the scripts from the Build menu? (I'd choose Mono; there's almost no way compiling "LSL" could work if "Mono" doesn't). And (again assuming there's more than one script) can you Set Scripts to Running in that Build menu?

[Ardy Lay]

I cannot imagine how a slideshow script needs to display "please wait".  The ones I make use one of:  textures in task inventory; UUIDs of texture assets stored within the script;  or UUIDs of texture assets read from a notecard.  Even the notecard reader doesn't make the user wait because it doesn't do the dumb and read the entire card into memory before displaying images.  You don't suppose ... 

 

[Qie Niangao]

11 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

You don't suppose ... 

Huh, now that's interesting. I'm hard-pressed to concoct an explanation for using XML_RPC in a slideshow (innocent or otherwise). Did anybody ever use that to phone home with version data to trigger sending updates, way back when?

The Lab could presumably tell the origin and destination of any XMLRPC protocol attempts from a sim. But it's idle curiosity at most, a slideshow script being so trivial to replace.

[MarissaNL]

41 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Very unlikely anything has changed affecting scripts in this device at any point in the past decade. It's interesting that resetting the scripts gives a "'please wait' screen", which makes me wonder: how many scripts are in this object, and are they all in the same prim? Assuming there's more than one, what are their names? Can you try Recompiling the scripts from the Build menu? (I'd choose Mono; there's almost no way compiling "LSL" could work if "Mono" doesn't). And (again assuming there's more than one script) can you Set Scripts to Running in that Build menu?

When I reset the the scripts from the content tab of the slideshow, I get:


But when I do it from the build menu, I get this permission error (for both Mono as LSL):


I also set the scripts to running:

I am not really technical, so I hope I did this right.

Thank you.

[MarissaNL]

42 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

I cannot imagine how a slideshow script needs to display "please wait".  The ones I make use one of:  textures in task inventory; UUIDs of texture assets stored within the script;  or UUIDs of texture assets read from a notecard.  Even the notecard reader doesn't make the user wait because it doesn't do the dumb and read the entire card into memory before displaying images.  You don't suppose ... 

 

I think it is part of the script and on this screen it gets stuck.


 

I am not technical at all, but if I understand you correct, when the script in my slideshows are using that LSL XML RPC method, that as it is turned off now, it will be reason they don't work anymore.

So my only option is, to find a more modern slideshow that doesn't use it. Correct?

Edited May 30, 2023 by MarissaNL

[Qie Niangao]

One thing bothers me about the XMLRPC theory. @Signal Linden's blog post includes the following (revised) timeline:

Quote

• May 2023 - XML-RPC will be permanently disabled on RC regions
• June 2023 - Incoming LSL XML-RPC traffic will be permanently blocked across the grid.

So, it still being May today, on non-RC regions, shouldn't scripts that depend on XML-RPC still be working as normal? (I'm not sure if "XML-RPC circuit breaker has been left open" means it should work, or it shouldn't.)

If that's the right logic, I'd normally suggest checking whether an RC simulator is running on the region where the problem is happening, but are there currently any RC regions on the main grid at the moment or did they all get rolled back to 2023-05-05.579955? Or maybe XML-RPC is configured to be disabled on region in channels that are supposed to run release candidates whether or not they're currently running actual RC software? (We're not supposed to know which regions are in which channels anymore, but I happen to know at least some "RC regions" are currently running the standard server release.)

I've never touched XML-RPC so I don't have any code with which to test, and it doesn't sound fun to debug a new script that tests whether its central function even works anymore.

Anyway, in lieu of any actual information, if the OP thinks their region might be in an RC channel, it may be worth running a copy of the slideshow to a non-RC script-enabled sandbox and seeing if it magically starts working there. If so, that would pretty much confirm the XML-RPC theory, but it's not so easy to discredit the theory without more information about where XML-RPC should still be working, if anywhere.

[Love Zhaoying]

17 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

One thing bothers me about the XMLRPC theory. @Signal Linden's blog post includes the following (revised) timeline:

So, it still being May today, on non-RC regions, shouldn't scripts that depend on XML-RPC still be working as normal? (I'm not sure if "XML-RPC circuit breaker has been left open" means it should work, or it shouldn't.)

If that's the right logic, I'd normally suggest checking whether an RC simulator is running on the region where the problem is happening, but are there currently any RC regions on the main grid at the moment or did they all get rolled back to 2023-05-05.579955? Or maybe XML-RPC is configured to be disabled on region in channels that are supposed to run release candidates whether or not they're currently running actual RC software? (We're not supposed to know which regions are in which channels anymore, but I happen to know at least some "RC regions" are currently running the standard server release.)

I've never touched XML-RPC so I don't have any code with which to test, and it doesn't sound fun to debug a new script that tests whether its central function even works anymore.

Anyway, in lieu of any actual information, if the OP thinks their region might be in an RC channel, it may be worth running a copy of the slideshow to a non-RC script-enabled sandbox and seeing if it magically starts working there. If so, that would pretty much confirm the XML-RPC theory, but it's not so easy to discredit the theory without more information about where XML-RPC should still be working, if anywhere.

I've been thinking..since the OP was gone for 3 weeks, we don't know when this stopped working.  

Could the XML-RPC changes be a coincidence?  Could the script depend on some website that is down, or some other functionality which broke?

If any of us have a "should still work" XML-RPC script (I myself do not), would it be worth us testing that script on RC vs. non-RC regions?

[Qie Niangao]

Hot off the presses (from Simulator User Group meeting) :

Quote

[12:09] Signal Linden: XML-RPC has been turned off for everything including SLS except for a very small channel where regions can be placed if they have content that requires XML-RPC until the cut-off date of June 1st, which BTW: is two days from now.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Hot off the presses (from Simulator User Group meeting) :

 

That implies, only people who complain will get moved to the special channel. 

(And users with scripts that use XML-RPC who don't know why the script broke, are just out of luck.)

[Qie Niangao]

Yeah, it does at least clarify that the timeline is right for the slideshow to have stopped working because of an XML_RPC dependency. I'd say at this point it's easier to just replace the script. I wonder if there isn't an open source one in a library somewhere; how complicated could it be?

[MarissaNL]

Thank you for all your effort on this issue.

Meanwhile I have found another slideshow that works on my land and does everything I want. Started to move the pictures to the new slideshow.