Ayana Auer

I would like to have a donation box.  Can someone tell me how to make one?

Are you seeing strange trails of blue, green, or red shapes (often triangles) from objects inworld? There's a very good chance you enabled Second Life's update indicators. These are activated by opening the Advanced menu and selecting Advanced > Show Updates. Older viewers also provided the shortcut Ctrl-Alt-⇧ Shift-U for this feature. The update indicators show you when packet data is being utilized -- typically, when an object makes an update to the world. Each color has a different meaning: Red: Indicates a full update, such as the creation of a prim. This is a relatively large data packet sent to your computer. If you see objects that are showing a constant stream of red, they're contending for your bandwidth, which may cause other things in the area (like textures) to load slower. If the object is made up of many pieces, the packet is larger. Blue: Indicates a partial update, such as a change of position or color for a prim. These are always smaller than full updates. However, the same rules apply as for the full updates. If you're creating content, it's a good habit to make sure it's not updating many times per second. Changing colors, textures, shape, or particle parameters several times per second cause partial updates, and contend for your bandwidth. Green: Indicates an ending update, such as the deletion of a prim. If this packet gets lost on the way from the server to your computer, the object becomes a "ghost" --your viewer still renders it, but you can walk through it, and when you edit it, the Creator field is blank because the object no longer exists on the server. The update indicators can be toggled on or off using the methods described above. Note for content creators There are a few LSL commands that create viewer-side effects, meaning they send the animation parameters to the client once, and the client subsequently takes care of animating them. Take advantage of these commands to make dynamic content without streaming lots of data from the server to your computer: llParticleSystem creates particles. llTargetOmega rotates an object. llSetTextureAnim rotates, scales, or slides texture without sending update packets.

I need help getting the item to stop animating me.

I'd like a guide for holding a very big event in SL.

If your firewall is blocking outbound TCP port 12043, the following activities won't work: Teleporting Viewing the World Map Crossing regions Related activities This is because in Second Life 1.13.2, we've enabled Capabilities, which require outbound traffic to communicate with our servers. So far, we've found this to be a very rare occurrence involving unusually restrictive firewalls, and should not affect the majority of Residents. So chances are this does not apply to you, but in the event that it does: To resolve this issue, what you need to do is allow traffic on outbound TCP port 12043. Some corporate firewalls that restrict all outgoing TCP connections need to either: Open outgoing connections to this port on our nets. Handle these connections the same way they do other HTTP and HTTPS traffic (in theory, by redirecting it to a proxy). For more info on firewalls, search: How do I configure my software firewall? How do I configure my hardware firewall? and for specific instructions not covered here, consult your firewall's manual.

Go to Edit > Preferences > Network and move the Maximum Bandwidth slider further to the right. The number is measured in kilobits per second; if you aren't sure what this means, you should check with your Internet Service Provider for more details. On a great connection, you can set it to 1000 and if your packet loss bar doesn't go red constantly, it should be OK.

The Library folder in your inventory contains content provided by Linden Lab® for use by all Residents. The way this folder works is similar to a "shared drive" on your computer network. All Residents share the same content at any given time. You cannot use objects in the Library until you copy them to your own Inventory; you can drag a copy onto the ground, your avatar, or another folder in your Inventory. From time to time, Linden Lab adds, edits or deletes content from the Library to ensure that it remains a useful resource for all Residents. To make sure that any changes to your Library cause a minimum amount of inconvenience, we've archived all of the content and made it available for you at any time at the following inworld location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Stillman/136/75/23 Simply click on the wooden box that says 'Old Library Content' to retieve a package containing all items that have been removed from the Library.

Dual core processor machines (Pentium D, Core 2 Duo, Athlon 64X2, and so on) are increasingly popular, and as a result, more Residents are using this type of PC. Unfortunately, Second Life isn't currently optimized for dual core processor setups. If you're reporting poor performance and you're running a dual core machine, please do the following: While running SL (or at least have the Viewer login screen showing), bring up the Windows task manager by pressing CTRL+ALT+Delete Select the Processes tab, and locate SecondLife.exe listed underImage Name Right-click on SecondLife.exe, and from the dropdown, select "SetAffinity..." When the Processor Affinity window pops up, you'll most likely notice that two CPUs are selected, CPU 0 & CPU 1. Select only one of the CPUs, then click on OK. Note: Affinity will reset back to using both processors after you log off SL. You will need to repeat the process above after you log back onto SL. To see if you're running a dual core processor machine, do the following: Bring up the Windows task manager by pressing CTRL-ALT-Del Select the Performance tab If you see TWO graphs in the CPU usage history section, you're running a dual core processor setup. Additional info: You can use one of the following applications to permanently change the affinity of a process/application: ImageCfg WinLauncherXP XCPU If you're running an AMD Dual Core system, install AMD's hotfix. If the hotfix isn't enough, use Imagecfg to permanently change the affinity of the process/application. Also, you can create a batch script so the affinity settings persist between logins: Make a text file with the following contents: c: cd \\Program Files\\SecondLife imagecfg -a 0x1 SecondLife.exe and then rename the suffix ".txt" to ".bat" and run it while Second Life is closed. Start Second Life and confirm affinity is set to only one core. You'll need to do this each time you've updated to a new version of Second Life.

How can I get past the "connecting to region" message and log into SL?

I need to know how to rebake textures.

My Second Life seems slow.  How can I make it faster?

There are several easy things you can try to find lost stuff, so don't worry! For example: I dropped some jewelry on the ground and I lost it! How do I find it? I was flying a vehicle and I jumped out. Now it's gone! Where is it? I was moving furniture and suddenly it disappeared! Now what? Check your Lost And Found folder As its name indicates, Lost And Found folder is a good first place to look. Sometimes, objects go past the boundaries of the world and are automatically returned, or are returned by another Resident whose land you left an object on. Check the Mini-Map If the object is relatively large, it'll appear as a light blue square on your Mini-Map. Click the Mini-Map button, which is also on the toolbar. The Mini-Map doesn't show object height, so fly up and down to see if you spot the object. Copyable objects Do you remember what the permissions on the object are? If it's "no copy" it's trickier, but if it's copyable (vehicles often are), don't worry: Open your Inventory. Search for the name of the object. You should see it appear in a folder, where you can rez and use it again. As for the stray copy out there, chances are someone else will find it on their land and return it to you. Draw a selection rectangle Selection rectangles highlight objects they select. Go to Tools > Select Tool > Edit. Although you can draw a selection rectangle by right-clicking the ground, this is useful if you're in the sky. Drag to draw a selection rectangle. A yellow shape grows as you continue to move your mouse, and selected objects are highlighted. This is handy for small objects because they stand out more. Use beacons Beacons help you find objects with special properties: for example, a physical ball that fell down a hill, or a box that keeps playing a sound that you can't quite locate. Select View > Beacons. Also, View > Highlight Transparent helps find objects that are see-through. Get an object scanner Some Residents make object scanners you can use to specify parameters and look for something — think of them as metal detectors, only more controllable. Look for object scanners on the Marketplace. Contact the creator Still can't find it? Send an Instant Message to the creator of the lost item, or the support staff listed in their profile. Tell them your tale and ask if they can help you with a free replacement. Individual policies vary, but it's worth a try, and they may be delighted how much you cherish their stuff! Hide the terrain Open the Advanced menu. Choose Advanced > Rendering > Types > SurfacePatch to deselect it. The ground disappears. This can make it easier to look for objects in some instances. Select SurfacePatch again to show the ground. Other Advanced options may be helpful too, but use them at your own risk. Carefully move your build Warning: You should only do this if you're confident about your building skills. Things will get more complicated if you can't put your build back together. If you think the object's lost in your house, consider carefully moving walls around. Sometimes furniture or even thin things like portraits or paintings get hidden because they were accidentally moved into the middle of a wall. To do this as the objects' owner: Right-click a wall and select Edit from the pie menu. Drag the colored arrows to move the wall. If you can't move a wall, it may be locked. While editing the object: Click the Object tab of the build tools. Uncheck Locked. Good luck!

When I start up SL, the crash logger comes, then disappears and then I cannot log into SL.  What can I do?

I am stuck dancing.  I cannot stop.  Please help!

An earlier Second Life server update (1.9) made major infrastructure changes to how your login session is maintained on the servers. Occasionally, the server that handled your last login session may take a few minutes to recognize that you have logged out. Please wait until the time specified by the error before attempting to log in again. Repeatedly attempting to log in when you receive this message may result in the process taking longer, preventing you from logging in at all. Mainland regions After waiting at least fifteen minutes, if the time until your account becomes available continues to change, please submit a ticket through the Support Portal and we can investigate further. Providing the error message and the last region you were logged into will help speed up the process. Private regions If you were on a private region owned by a Resident and are able to contact the estate owner or a manager another way, they're able to restart the region to clear your "presence" and allow you to login again.

Voice, like Second Life® itself, is designed to work with "zero configuration" and should work with most firewalls. Your firewall software may request permission to let "SLVoice.exe" and "SLVoiceAgent.exe" access the internet on their first execution; you should allow this access. The following ports need to be reachable through any firewall infrastructure: Ports 12000-17000 - UDP - for voice media Port 80/443 - TCP - for Web server Ports 5060 or 5062 - UDP - for voice control signals Ports 3478/3479 - UDP - to aid in setting up voice with NAT The current production IP ranges: 64.34.14.0/24 70.42.62.0/24 74.201.98.0/23 64.127.104.64/30 64.127.112.104/29 64.127.121.88/29 64.127.123.192/26 64.147.162.0/26 64.147.180.128/27 69.80.215.224/30 If the SIP connection on port 5060 fails (as it might if the router is designed to provide VoIP services of its own), the Second Life Viewer will automatically retry on port 5062. This means that port 5062 may need to be opened on some restrictive firewalls in rare instances.

Diagnostic logs, including crash logs, are a very important tool for debugging Second Life Viewer problems; they allow a developer to try to fix a bug that they've never personally witnessed. Sometimes, our Support team will ask you to provide diagnostic logs while helping you with a support ticket. Support may ask you to provide specific logs; preferably, you can attach them to a support ticket, or if the contents are shorter, you can open them up in a text editor and copy-and-paste them into your ticket. If you're not sure, ask Support to clarify. The Viewer can automatically submit crash logs to Linden Lab when the Viewer crashes, but external developers can't see them publicly. If you'd like the broader community to help find the bug that caused Second Life to crash on your computer, you can report the bug on the Issue Tracker and attach your crash logs. Where do I find the logs? You'll need to locate the SecondLife folder which contains the logs folder, and its location depends on your platform. In addition, platform specifics: Windows 7 and Vista Tip: If you have problems finding this folder, try Everything, a handy tool that searches everything on your hard drive by name. The folder is usually located at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming. If you install Second Life in a different location, the path is different. In any case, to get to the right place: In Windows Explorer, click the Start Button. In the search field (in Windows 7, it's labeled "Search programs and files" and in Windows Vista, it's labeled "Start Search"), type %appdata% and press Enter ↵. In the window that appears, open the SecondLife folder. see the logs folder for SecondLife.log, SecondLifeCrash.log and stack_trace.log Windows XP The folder is usually located at C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\SecondLife. If you install Second Life in a different location, the path is different. To get to the right place: In Windows Explorer, click Start button. Click Run. In the Run window, type %appdata% and click OK. In the window that appears, open the SecondLife folder. see the logs folder for SecondLife.log, SecondLifeCrash.log and stack_trace.log Mac In addition to the Viewer's own crash reporting, there's also: A general Mac OS X tool called Crash Reporter. More technical details. A System Profiler report, which contains all of the necessary data about your computer and the hardware inside of it. This is useful for Linden Lab to group problems with similar hardware. In the Finder, choose Apple menu > About This Mac. Click the More Info button to open the System Profiler. In the System Profile, choose File > Save. Give the file a unique name so you can find it later, then attach it to your Issue Tracker bug report. Also see "Bug Reporting Best Practices" from Apple. Linux The folder is located at ~/.secondlife - it's a hidden folder (the folder name begins with a dot) and it's inside the user home folder. To get here: Open your file manager go to your home folder if needed, enable "Show Hidden Files and Directories" or a similar option in your file manager open the .secondlife folder see the logs folder for SecondLife.log, SecondLifeCrash.log and stack_trace.log

Can someone explain how to configure my hardware firewall?

I need some help with teleporting please?  It does not seem to be working right.

Packets of data travel across computer networks, including the Internet, home or any corporate network. If one or more of these packets fails to reach its destination, packet loss occurs. These lost or dropped packets can result in performance issues. If your network transport protocol provides for packet recovery, a transmitted packet that is lost will be re-sent. However, it will be re-sent along with every other packet of data that had been sent after it. This causes the overall throughput of the connection to drop. How to check for packet loss inworld: The Second Life® viewer offers several options to check for packet loss. The Lag Meter - Go to Help > Lag Meter Overlay Bar - By default this shows as a search bar in the top right corner of your viewer. Go to Edit > Preferences > General tab and deselect the Show search panel in overlay bar checkbox. The Client and Network bars show in the top right corner of your screen. Click the bars to open the Lag Meter. Statistics Bar - Go to View > Statistics Bar. The statistics window shows your Packet Loss percentage in the Basic statistic information section. Typical causes of packet loss. High packet loss results in "lag". Connection difficulties can lie in any of the following sources: Your home network Use of a wireless network Your ISP A third-party Internet connection between your ISP and our host. Occasionally with our provider's network. Potential solutions There are a few things you can try in order to identify and mitigate causes of packet loss. Traceroute Process Before starting the traceroute process, locate the Region server where you are experiencing network lag. This information can be found from your viewer menu: Go to Help > About Second Life. Locate the Region server in the second paragraph, which will show as "sim####.agni.lindenlab.com". You might use a program called "WinMTR" (Windows Matt's TraceRoute) to determine if the problem is with your connection; your Internet Service Provider, or our network. Download WinMTR. Extract "winmtr_bin.zip". Start WinMTR.exe. Enter your Region server address (from step 2. above) in the Host field and click Start. The traceroute process runs and repeats over and over again. Look under the Loss % column. Optimally, it should be as close to all 0's as possible. If there's any packet loss in the first one or two hosts (listed under Hostname), the problem's in your network. Turning down your Maximum Bandwidth may help. You can do this from your viewer menu by selecting Edit > Preferences > Network and moving the Maximum Bandwidth slider towards the left. Reduce the bandwidth until your packet loss is 0%. If the problem's after the first two or three hosts, but before the first hostname containing "Level3," the problem's at your ISP, and you might want to contact them to investigate further. If the problem's after a "Level3" host, then it's a problem with our network (or the Region servers). In this case, click WinMTR's Copy Text to clipboard, then paste it into an empty text file and save it. If you have a Basic account, head for a help Island and talk to someone there. Residents with a Premium Account can submit a support ticket through the Support Portal. Be sure to copy and paste the information from WinMTR into the body of the ticket. This trace can also be performed from your cmd window in Windows. Click the Windows Start button and select Run. Type "cmd" and press enter In the cmd.exe screen, type "tracert (Region server address) > route txt" as shown in this example. Press enter. When the trace is complete, click the Windows Start button again and select Search. Search for your file named "route.txt". Review the information above about traceroute results. Firewall If the traceroute shows no problem, check the following items: Your firewall settings, including your hardware router Any software firewall you may have installed The firewall installed and enabled by default by Windows XP Service Pack 2 Wireless Connection Connect your computer directly into your LAN. Note for Linux and Mac Users For Linux systems and Macs, a request for a traceroute fails at the last hop because we discard UDP traffic inbound to our servers for security reasons. Why, then, does this method work for PCs? Diagnostic tools like ping and TraceRoute were made to communicate using ICMP. For some mysterious (but probably relevant) reason, Linux and Macs run their traceroute over UDP by default. However, they can be forced to use ICMP, at which point they will work as expected. When running a traceroute from any Linux-based system or Mac, insert the "-I" setting to indicate ICMP instead of UDP. Please also note that this switch is not recognized when running a traceroute from the Mac Network Utility, but works as designed when run from Terminal. Example: traceroute -I sim5831.agni.lindenlab.com

Is there a way to find out how my region is performing?  I would like as much information as possible!

I have problems with my firewall settings.  Can someone help me?

Any tips on how to make my avatar look better?  Its jagged and sometimes has strange colors and spikes.

Click the Search button at the bottom of the Second Life window, then click the Land Sales tab: It shows land other Residents have for sale. You can click the All Types and PG & Mature dropdown menus to look for specific types of land (such as mainland, private regions, or land up for auction), and narrow down your results by price and size too. Looking for land on the mainland near you? Open the map (click the Map button at the bottom of the Second Life window) and select the Land for Sale checkbox. Land that's for sale will be highlighted on the map. Second Life's Auctions also list land parcels for sale, which sell to the highest bidder. Auction parcels can sell for Linden Dollars (L$) as well as US dollars (USD$).

There are various resources for this. You could search in the Second Life wiki - Creation portal . You can apply images and textures of your own design to your avatar's skin. However, most avatars use this skin texture layer for wearing custom skins, and use the various clothing layers to wear tattoos. Tattoos, like other forms of texture transparency in the Second Life® virtual world, require a special part of an image known as an "alpha channel". The alpha channel serves as a "hidden color" that shows where to draw the texture and where to remain transparent. One such use for alpha channels would be to "paint" a window into a wall without physically building the window. Another good resource to learn the steps involved in making tattoos is here.