PCampBot

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__NOTOC__
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{{Quicklinks|PCampBot}}
{{Template:Quicklinks}}
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<br />
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This is the PhysicsCamperbot libslBot tester.
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= Using pCampbot as of OpenSimulator 0.7.6 =
 +
pCampBot has changed considerably in OpenSimulator development code. Here is the current usage statement that you'll get if you execute pCampBot.exe as of OpenSimulator 0.7.6.
  
This is designed to be run in standalone mode with authorize accounts
+
<pre>
turned off as a way to stress test the simulator.  It creates <N>
+
usage: pCampBot <-loginuri loginuri> [OPTIONS]
clients that log in, randomly jump/walk around, and say excuses from
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Spawns a set of bots to test an OpenSim region
the BOFH.
+
  
*** WARNING ***
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  -l, -loginuri      loginuri for grid/standalone (required)
Using this bot on a public grid could get you banned permanently, so
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  -s, -start        start location for bots (optional).  Can be "last", "home" or a specific location with or without co-ords (e.g. "region1" or "region2/50/30/90"
just say No! to griefing!
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  -firstname        first name for the bots (required)
 +
  -lastname          lastname for the bots (required).  Each lastname will have <bot-number> appended, e.g. Ima Bot0
 +
  -password          password for the bots (required)
 +
  -n, -botcount      number of bots to start (default: 1) (optional)
 +
  -f, -from          starting number for login bot names, e.g. 25 will login Ima Bot25, Ima Bot26, etc.  (default: 0) (optional)
 +
  -c, -connect      connect all bots at startup (optional)
 +
  -b, behaviours    behaviours for bots.  Comma separated, e.g. n,p,g.  Default is p (required)
 +
    current options are:
 +
      p (physics  - bots constantly move and jump around)
 +
      g (grab    - bots randomly click prims whether set clickable or not)
 +
      n (none    - bots do nothing)
 +
      t (teleport - bots regularly teleport between regions on the grid)
 +
  -wear              folder from which to load appearance data, "no" if there is no such folder (default: no) (optional)
 +
  -h, -help          show this message.
 +
</pre>
  
----- Setup -----
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You must have already created all the necessary bot accounts in the simulator before using pCampbot. It does not create these accounts on the fly.
Linux: To build, in the main opensim directory, run:
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  ./runprebuild.sh
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  nant
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Windows: Run the prebuild.bat in the main opensim directory and then
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Because pCampbot connects bots using the [http://lib.openmetaverse.org libopenmetaverse] library in the same manner that an ordinary viewer program would connect, you can use the pCampbot in 0.7.6 or later to test earlier versions of OpenSimulator.
open the created solution and compile it.
+
  
pCampBot.exe will end up in the regular opensim/bin folder
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The -wear option almost certainly doesn't work. The others are operational.
  
----- Running the bot -----
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On using this facility you'll get a console command line similar to the one in OpenSimulator and Robust. Type "help" at this prompt to see further commands.
  
windows: pCampBot.exe -botcount <N> -loginuri <URI>
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== Optional pCampbot.ini configuration ==
*nix: mono pCampBot.exe -botcount <N> -loginuri <URI>
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pCampbot has some further optional configuration options relating to detailed bot behaviour in pCampbot.ini.example.  To change these from the defaults
  
The names it produces are random by default, however, you can specify
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cp pCampbot.ini.example pCampbot.ini
either a firstname or a lastname in the command line also.
+
  
ex: pCampBot.exe -botcount <N> -loginuri <URI> -lastname <lastname>
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and change pCampbot.ini accordingly.
  
If you specify both a firstname *and* a lastname, you'll likely run
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== Caveats ==
into trouble unless you're only running a single bot.  In that case,
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there's also a password option.
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pCampBot.exe -botcount 1 -loginuri http://somegrid.com:8002 -firstname SomeDude -lastname SomeDude -password GobbleDeGook
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* A pCampBot synthetic bot load is still an extremely poor proxy for a 'real' connection (i.e. a real human being logging in with a viewer and doing all the things they expect to be able to do in a virtual world).  Real connections are very likely to place different stresses on the simulator so real-world performance may be considerably different and poorer than synthetic load tests would suggest.
  
----- Commands -----
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* There are some things you can do to improve this in pCampbot.  For instance, if you have RequestObjectTextures set in pCampbot.ini then pCampbot will request textures for all objects it sees.  This is both much less stressful than a real scenario (since for a particular sets of bots textures are only requested once) and more stressful (since there is never any caching).
  
The bot has console commands:
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* pCampbot does currently not work well if there are any surrounding regions.  Avatars will currently just walk off into oblivion.  You must either build fences or remove such regions.  In testing so far, the presence of neighbouring regions does not have any great impact on performance in the region occupied by bots. However, these tests were performed with blank surrounding regions - surrounding regions containing objects will place more initial stress on the bot connections as object data is downloaded (and textures if this option is active).
  help      - lists the console commands and what they do
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  shutdown  - gracefully shuts down the bots
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  quit      - forcefully shuts things down leaving stuff unclean
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  addbots N - adds N number of random bots. (replace 'N' with a number)
+
  
From the README.txt included with the source
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== Example ==
 +
Okay, let's suppose that we're on Linux and want to create a 5 bot synthetic load test on a region called myregion1.  Depending on your bandwidth and the bot settings you can connect quite a large number of bots but for this example we will stick with 5. Here are the steps to take.
 +
 
 +
=== Step 1: Create bot accounts ===
 +
The first step is to create 5 bot accounts, all with the same password.  Each bot account must have the same first name and the same last name prefix.  But each bot must also have its last name prefix appended its bot number, starting from 0.  In this case, we want five bots, and lets suppose we will call them "ima bot".  Then the five accounts that we want are
 +
 
 +
ima bot0
 +
ima bot1
 +
ima bot2
 +
ima bot3
 +
ima bot4
 +
 
 +
The classic way to create a user account is to do it by using the "create user" command on the OpenSimulator standalone or Robust service console, depending on whether one is running in standalone or grid mode.  However, this can be laborious, particularly if one needs hundreds of bot accounts.  There's a very basic python script at https://github.com/justincc/opensimulator-tools/blob/master/create-user-line-generator/src/culg.py ( dead link ) which will generate the user lines needed, giving each account a non-random UUID for later debugging purposes.  The lines that this script generated can be pasted directly into the OpenSimulator console.
 +
 
 +
=== Step 2: Start pCampbot ===
 +
The next step is to start up pCampbot with the required connection parameters.  Let us suppose that you want to test against a region called "r1" on a local grid with a loginuri of <nowiki>http://192.168.1.2:8002</nowiki>.  Let us assume that you've given the bots the password "plentyofruth". The command to run is then
 +
 
 +
mono --debug pCampBot.exe -loginuri <nowiki>http://192.168.1.2:8002</nowiki> -s r1 -firstname ima -lastname bot -password plentyofruth
 +
 
 +
This will start up pCampbot and you'll see a familiar console command line as you would on a simulator or Robust console.  As with the other consoles, you can type "help" to get a list of commands.
 +
 
 +
As of OpenSimulator 0.7.6, pCampbot by default starts without automatically connecting the bots.
 +
 
 +
=== Step 3: Connect the bots ===
 +
Once you're ready, type the command
 +
 
 +
conn
 +
 
 +
to start connecting the bots.  You will see the connection messages on the console and if all goes well you'll see the bots appear on the region.  The default bot behaviour is "physics", so the bots will start walking and jumping around to test and load up region physics.
 +
 
 +
A client connection is a complicated affair so you'll probably see many warnings and debug messages of different severity on the console.  But as long as the bot it present in the region you can assume that the connection has succeeded.
 +
 
 +
=== Step 4: Assess performance ===
 +
Now this is quite tricky, since there's currently no automated way of assessing simulator or connection performance.  Manual ways to assess this include logging in a viewer to the same region to get a feel for avatar movement (e.g. is it jerky, is there rubberbanding, is chat delayed, etc.) and to see [[Client_side_monitoring|viewer statistics]] such as Ping Sim, Packet Loss, Physics Time (frame) and Spare Time (frame). 
 +
 
 +
However, one needs to be extremely careful if logging in using a viewer on the same machine from which the bots are running.  The bots should really be running from a different machine or ideally even from a different network in order to get a more accurate picture of current simulator performance.
 +
 
 +
One can also look at [[Monitoring|server side monitoring]], particularly "show stats clientstack" which will show various client stack related statistics (this is the part of the OpenSimulator code that handles receiving and sending of UDP messages from viewers).  In particular, the InboxPacketsCount should be constantly 0 or near 0 - a build up here means that your simulator is receiving UDP packets quicker than it can process them.
 +
 
 +
=== Step 5: Disconnect bots ===
 +
Once you've finished, you can disconnect the bots in an orderly fashion with the command
 +
 
 +
disconn
 +
 
 +
Once all the bots are disconnected you can exit pCampbot with the command
 +
 +
quit
 +
 
 +
or reconnect the bots if you want.  You can also see the current connection status of bots with the command
 +
 
 +
show bots
 +
 
 +
at any time.
 +
 
 +
[[Category:Testing]]

Latest revision as of 03:42, 4 December 2023

Contents

[edit] Using pCampbot as of OpenSimulator 0.7.6

pCampBot has changed considerably in OpenSimulator development code. Here is the current usage statement that you'll get if you execute pCampBot.exe as of OpenSimulator 0.7.6.

usage: pCampBot <-loginuri loginuri> [OPTIONS]
Spawns a set of bots to test an OpenSim region

  -l, -loginuri      loginuri for grid/standalone (required)
  -s, -start         start location for bots (optional).  Can be "last", "home" or a specific location with or without co-ords (e.g. "region1" or "region2/50/30/90"
  -firstname         first name for the bots (required)
  -lastname          lastname for the bots (required).  Each lastname will have <bot-number> appended, e.g. Ima Bot0
  -password          password for the bots (required)
  -n, -botcount      number of bots to start (default: 1) (optional)
  -f, -from          starting number for login bot names, e.g. 25 will login Ima Bot25, Ima Bot26, etc.  (default: 0) (optional)
  -c, -connect       connect all bots at startup (optional)
  -b, behaviours     behaviours for bots.  Comma separated, e.g. n,p,g.  Default is p (required)
    current options are:
       p (physics  - bots constantly move and jump around)
       g (grab     - bots randomly click prims whether set clickable or not)
       n (none     - bots do nothing)
       t (teleport - bots regularly teleport between regions on the grid)
  -wear              folder from which to load appearance data, "no" if there is no such folder (default: no) (optional)
  -h, -help          show this message.

You must have already created all the necessary bot accounts in the simulator before using pCampbot. It does not create these accounts on the fly.

Because pCampbot connects bots using the libopenmetaverse library in the same manner that an ordinary viewer program would connect, you can use the pCampbot in 0.7.6 or later to test earlier versions of OpenSimulator.

The -wear option almost certainly doesn't work. The others are operational.

On using this facility you'll get a console command line similar to the one in OpenSimulator and Robust. Type "help" at this prompt to see further commands.

[edit] Optional pCampbot.ini configuration

pCampbot has some further optional configuration options relating to detailed bot behaviour in pCampbot.ini.example. To change these from the defaults

cp pCampbot.ini.example pCampbot.ini

and change pCampbot.ini accordingly.

[edit] Caveats

  • A pCampBot synthetic bot load is still an extremely poor proxy for a 'real' connection (i.e. a real human being logging in with a viewer and doing all the things they expect to be able to do in a virtual world). Real connections are very likely to place different stresses on the simulator so real-world performance may be considerably different and poorer than synthetic load tests would suggest.
  • There are some things you can do to improve this in pCampbot. For instance, if you have RequestObjectTextures set in pCampbot.ini then pCampbot will request textures for all objects it sees. This is both much less stressful than a real scenario (since for a particular sets of bots textures are only requested once) and more stressful (since there is never any caching).
  • pCampbot does currently not work well if there are any surrounding regions. Avatars will currently just walk off into oblivion. You must either build fences or remove such regions. In testing so far, the presence of neighbouring regions does not have any great impact on performance in the region occupied by bots. However, these tests were performed with blank surrounding regions - surrounding regions containing objects will place more initial stress on the bot connections as object data is downloaded (and textures if this option is active).

[edit] Example

Okay, let's suppose that we're on Linux and want to create a 5 bot synthetic load test on a region called myregion1. Depending on your bandwidth and the bot settings you can connect quite a large number of bots but for this example we will stick with 5. Here are the steps to take.

[edit] Step 1: Create bot accounts

The first step is to create 5 bot accounts, all with the same password. Each bot account must have the same first name and the same last name prefix. But each bot must also have its last name prefix appended its bot number, starting from 0. In this case, we want five bots, and lets suppose we will call them "ima bot". Then the five accounts that we want are

ima bot0
ima bot1
ima bot2
ima bot3
ima bot4

The classic way to create a user account is to do it by using the "create user" command on the OpenSimulator standalone or Robust service console, depending on whether one is running in standalone or grid mode. However, this can be laborious, particularly if one needs hundreds of bot accounts. There's a very basic python script at https://github.com/justincc/opensimulator-tools/blob/master/create-user-line-generator/src/culg.py ( dead link ) which will generate the user lines needed, giving each account a non-random UUID for later debugging purposes. The lines that this script generated can be pasted directly into the OpenSimulator console.

[edit] Step 2: Start pCampbot

The next step is to start up pCampbot with the required connection parameters. Let us suppose that you want to test against a region called "r1" on a local grid with a loginuri of http://192.168.1.2:8002. Let us assume that you've given the bots the password "plentyofruth". The command to run is then

mono --debug pCampBot.exe -loginuri http://192.168.1.2:8002 -s r1 -firstname ima -lastname bot -password plentyofruth

This will start up pCampbot and you'll see a familiar console command line as you would on a simulator or Robust console. As with the other consoles, you can type "help" to get a list of commands.

As of OpenSimulator 0.7.6, pCampbot by default starts without automatically connecting the bots.

[edit] Step 3: Connect the bots

Once you're ready, type the command

conn

to start connecting the bots. You will see the connection messages on the console and if all goes well you'll see the bots appear on the region. The default bot behaviour is "physics", so the bots will start walking and jumping around to test and load up region physics.

A client connection is a complicated affair so you'll probably see many warnings and debug messages of different severity on the console. But as long as the bot it present in the region you can assume that the connection has succeeded.

[edit] Step 4: Assess performance

Now this is quite tricky, since there's currently no automated way of assessing simulator or connection performance. Manual ways to assess this include logging in a viewer to the same region to get a feel for avatar movement (e.g. is it jerky, is there rubberbanding, is chat delayed, etc.) and to see viewer statistics such as Ping Sim, Packet Loss, Physics Time (frame) and Spare Time (frame).

However, one needs to be extremely careful if logging in using a viewer on the same machine from which the bots are running. The bots should really be running from a different machine or ideally even from a different network in order to get a more accurate picture of current simulator performance.

One can also look at server side monitoring, particularly "show stats clientstack" which will show various client stack related statistics (this is the part of the OpenSimulator code that handles receiving and sending of UDP messages from viewers). In particular, the InboxPacketsCount should be constantly 0 or near 0 - a build up here means that your simulator is receiving UDP packets quicker than it can process them.

[edit] Step 5: Disconnect bots

Once you've finished, you can disconnect the bots in an orderly fashion with the command

disconn

Once all the bots are disconnected you can exit pCampbot with the command

quit

or reconnect the bots if you want. You can also see the current connection status of bots with the command

show bots

at any time.

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