[Opensim-users] Strange effekt / Avatar totaly stretched

[Chris Hart]

It's a marvellous effect, and we did have a laugh about it last night while doing a tour with a potential client (discovered the server we were on at the time was set to the wrong timezone, hence the early appearance). But it wasn't just stick avatars, several folks Hippos crashed out. 

There's a bit of an issue that I don't believe many core testers use MSSQL, hence I can't trust that what one person tags as stable will be stable for me. 0.6.1 required an additional patch for MSSQL because there were fundamental core changes that had happened between 0.6.0 and 0.6.1. Since having experienced that problem (before we formally launched our grid) I’ve run with my own tests and procedures. I've got a big test plan and did two weeks of testing before upgrading. I like using MSSQL, it's what I'm familiar with, I'm not switching, I believe it's a great platform for OpenSim (as proved by ReactionGrid now over 100 regions), and I want to help improve it. 

This is the first Open Source project I've ever worked with, and I didn't start looking at it til May last year - I had no clue that this was coming and was caught very much off-guard this morning. Seriously, I'd woken up thinking how glad I was that I didn't have to reboot all the servers every morning since the upgrade, relaxed that I could reclaim an extra 20-30 mins a day from that improvement alone, and that's all thanks to the great stuff you guys have been doing. I'm very sorry if I have offended anyone with my response. It didn't take a massive amount of time to fix, a couple of hours before most Gridizens woke up, and I am very grateful for Teravus's help over IRC in getting a patch together that worked on rev 8831. Yes, I should have stuck to the RC, but I saw some great bug fixes going into trunk in the week after that initial tag was made that made the whole idea of upgrading a teeny bit further quite appealing. And again I speak in my own defence - I did test, test, and test again and I can say that apart from this "feature", 8831 is working out really well for us! I would rather not be so far off trunk that our grid can be of little help to the main OpenSim development process. One example is the Sloodle to OpenSim port that has been worked on in both OSGrid and ReactionGrid. We at ReactionGrid want to be part of those sorts of projects that directly lead to core code improvements if possible, and are willing to shoulder some risk in order to help with that.


-----Original Message-----
From: opensim-users-bounces at lists.berlios.de [mailto:opensim-users-bounces at lists.berlios.de] On Behalf Of Justin Clark-Casey
Sent: 01 April 2009 15:25
To: opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] Strange effekt / Avatar totaly stretched

This is a very funny joke - I love the long tentacled avatars.

However, I can appreciate your frustration, Chris.  I think that it's unfortunate that 0.6.3 suffers from an avatar 
appearance regression that hasn't been addressed.  That's not to disrespect the efforts of Charles, Stefan and other 
folk who manage the releases.  They do a fine job, though I think the would also agree that our releases are still more 
or less finger in the air, does this seem stable? affairs (though perhaps Stefan is trying to change this by doing 
release candidates).

To some extent I think it's a manpower problem.  Until there is a really great desire for stable releases as opposed to 
trunk snapshots, then the effort won't go in to assuring this.

Having said that, I think that it's unfortunate if some fun code crept into a 0.6.4 release candidate - perhaps it 
should be put in a little nearer April 1.


MW wrote:
> I can understand your point and as I said we are sorry for any problems 
> this issue caused.
> 
> But its just that comments like "Now to waste an hour of my time 
> patching all my servers." that just make me wonder why "I have wasted 
> all those thousands of hours working on opensim and doing all that work 
> for free". When what we get in return is people moaning about spending a 
> hour on something.
> 
> I'm just talking from a personal point of view here (and in no way 
> represent the thoughts of the other developers), but its just makes me 
> more and more wonder why we do this.
> 
> BTW: Just so people know, I believe the 0.6.4RC that Stefan tagged also 
> has this issue in it, but then thats most likely why its a RC and not a 
> stable release.
> 
> --- On *Wed, 1/4/09, Chris Hart /<Chris at codetorque.co.uk>/* wrote:
> 
>     From: Chris Hart <Chris at codetorque.co.uk>
>     Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] Strange effekt / Avatar totaly stretched
>     To: michaelwri22 at yahoo.co.uk, opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
>     Date: Wednesday, 1 April, 2009, 11:46 AM
> 
>     Given that 0.6.3 was not a good release (avatar appearance bugs), I
>     was hoping to wait for 0.6.4 for ReactionGrid and for our clients.
>     It was taking a while to tag, and I had identified a stable revision
>     that I had put through a lot of testing and made the call based on
>     running a significant test plan. Our database (MSSQL) was over 5Gb,
>     the change from 0.6.2 to 0.6.4 included a major schema change that
>     meant the longer we left updating, the longer (and harder) an update
>     was gonna be. I made the call to update us just before Stefan tagged
>     the release – I didn’t anticipate this particular outcome.
> 
>      
> 
>     I will take full responsibility if there is a bug in opensim code
>     that affects my clients that would have been prevented if I had used
>     a stable branch, but I do actually trust you guys too – you do great
>     work, I read every commit log (evidently not thoroughly enough) and
>     I use my experience to make a call on whether a breaking change has
>     been put in or not. In this situation, what would have been nice
>     would have been a simple switch to return to normal. We saw the joke
>     last night and yes, we fell about laughing, thinking it was a freaky
>     occurrence on a highly-loaded sim, never for one moment realising
>     this was going to strike all our servers today.
> 
>      
> 
>     ReactionGrid is a young business, we’re pushing out there to find
>     customers who are willing to go with us through the bumps, ride the
>     fun little features, because we really do believe in the platform,
>     even at this early stage. I didn’t start working with OpenSim til
>     May last year, so I didn’t know this was likely to happen.
> 
>      
> 
>      
> 
>     *From:* opensim-users-bounces at lists.berlios.de
>     [mailto:opensim-users-bounces at lists.berlios.de] *On Behalf Of *MW
>     *Sent:* 01 April 2009 11:27
>     *To:* opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
>     *Subject:* Re: [Opensim-users] Strange effekt / Avatar totaly stretched
> 
>      
> 
>     I understand that it has caused you problems and we are sorry for
>     that but to be honest, its not a good idea to be running trunk in
>     any production set up or for business use. Trunk is for development
>     and can be broke at any time.
> 
>     We do release "stable" tagged versions and we strongly suggest that
>     anyone using opensim for business or production use sticks to those.
>     They all have their problems but trunk just can't be depended on to
>     be working/stable or anything.
> 
>     The only people who should be using trunk are developers, testers
>     and people who want to try the very lastest changes.
> 
>     All the developers work very hard for nothing in return so its a
>     small thing for some of us to put a small pank in TRUNK once a year.
> 
>     Again I do understand it has caused you some problems but we offer
>     all our work free and as I said we strongly advise people to use the
>     tagged versions.
> 
>