[Opensim-users] List of banned viewers for config files?

Justin Clark-Casey jjustincc at googlemail.com
Mon Aug 20 22:38:57 UTC 2012


Just to remind people, these 'bans' are no more secure than banning a web-browser from a web-site via the User Agent 
string.  All somebody has to do is change the string that the viewer is passing to OpenSimulator.

I still think it's a useful facility but please don't rely on this as a method to securely prevent a particular viewer 
from connecting.

On 19/08/12 14:30, Sarge Misfit wrote:
> R Gunther, you said that "Banning a viewer is just stupid, ..."
>
> Well, I guess you don't know anything about when the Emerald Viewer developers seriously violated the SL ToS, gathered
> info on users, conducted a DDoS attack against a detractor, all of which resulted in the viewer being banned from SL?
> Given such black-hat hacker behviour by those developers, wouldn't you ban such a viewer from your grid, or would you
> rather put visitors at risk?
>
> Sarge
>
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 5:00 AM, Akira Sonoda <akira.sonoda.1 at gmail.com <mailto:akira.sonoda.1 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     As you might notice. http://www.flickr.com/photos/akirasonoda/7814375104/ A majority of the OSGrid residents using
>     those "buggy" viewers. And i guess there is possibly no one in OSgrid who does not have installed one of them in
>     addition to his favorite experimental viewer...
>
>     As you might know Amazon has datacenters located at different places. One is located in Ireland. I have chosen that
>     one, because the goal of that party was to have a profiler running in parallel in order to have an idea to see what
>     is going wrong.
>
>     I am really not that comfortable with banning viewers. And I hope to open this region as sooon as we have evidence
>     the sim can support all those viwers with a lot of people (15 to 30) simultaneously partying with a decent amount of
>     lag and no forced logoff because of ACK timeouts, failing presence service calls etc.
>
>
>
>     2012/8/18 R.Gunther <rigun at rigutech.nl <mailto:rigun at rigutech.nl>>
>
>         Banning a viewer is just stupid, especially because the newer viewers work better.
>         But what i dont understand is that you blame the distance from region to grid server.
>         I can remember something that you did have the same problems in EC2 cloud on windows server.
>         and the EC2 cloud is in usa. So that dont explain much. You now lock people out of a region only because the
>         dont use imprudence or some other "buggy" viewer.
>
>
>         On 2012-08-18 17:07, Akira Sonoda wrote:
>>         Should be fine... is the correct wording :-) It works fine for Sims with 1 to 5 Avatars simultaneously which
>>         is possibly 99.9% of the whole Landmass served by OpenSim, but on crowded spaces very distant (Europe) from
>>         the Asset- Inventory etc. Severs ( California ) it does not... especially if the Cache Hit Ratio is low. Since
>>         November 2011 when those caps were introduced we only had problems which could be mitigated by disabling those
>>         caps and with the viewer bans in place we had quite a successful OSG5B Friday Party with 37 Avatars
>>         simultaneously partying without restart ( okie by the end of the party at around 01:00 CET the presence
>>         service went somehow corrupt and it was no longer possible to join the party ). Failed to verify presence or
>>         something like that was the message in the log. Yestertday again 22 People with the viewer restrictions i have
>>         in place plus disabled lindencps: http://www.flickr.com/photos/akirasonoda/7803972118/ no major problem ...
>>         feedback was: Rezzing is better, less clouds ...
>>
>>         But for sure we'd like to welcome all Viewers at the party... enabling getMesh ... should not be that much of
>>         an issue, because not too many Avatar wear Meshes... on the other hand, most of the visitors still use the
>>         imprudence especially if we enforce it somehow by banning most other viewer capable of rendering meshes,
>>         therefore there is no big rush to enable getMesh again...
>>
>>         Right now I am thinking of factoring the whole HTTP stuff out of the OpenSim into a separate Process, in order
>>         to have OpenSim doing what it can best, acting as a Region Server calculating physics and executing scripts
>>         and serving legacy UDP Packets to the Viewers. I hope to be able to start a Proof of Concept rather soon. In
>>         parallel I will do further testing with the different viwers and the different combination in order to get
>>         further insights.
>>
>>         take care
>>         Akira
>>
>>
>>         2012/8/14 Justin Clark-Casey <jjustincc at googlemail.com <mailto:jjustincc at googlemail.com>>
>>
>>             GetMesh and GetTexture should be fine in 0.7.4-rc1 (and probably earlier).
>>
>>             I think the "may lead to poor performance" was rather cautious.  If anything, fetching via HTTP should
>>             lead to better performance since it's not generating lots of UDP messages that have to traverse
>>             OpenSimulator's UDP client stack (and hence appear to be able to hold up/crowd out other UDP messages in
>>             the process).
>>
>>
>>             On 13/08/12 18:42, Akira Sonoda wrote:
>>
>>                 Hi Word,
>>
>>                 Because with those caps
>>
>>                 Cap_GetTexture=""
>>                 Cap_GetMesh=""
>>                 Cap_FetchInventoryDescendents2=""
>>                 Cap_FetchInventory2=""
>>
>>                 you won't see any textures on prims ... meaning all prims will be
>>                 invisible. Only Singularity 1.7 has this problem and is therefore
>>                 banned
>>                 The same applies for the experimental Cool VL Viewer which will be on
>>                 the banned list as well.
>>
>>                 Once I am certain at least GetTexture and GetMesh won't harm, they
>>                 possibly can be also allowed. But right now i do what is written in
>>                 the comment of the OpenSim.ini:
>>
>>                     ; This is disabled by default. Change if you see fit. Note that
>>                      ; serving this cap from the simulators may lead to poor performace.
>>
>>                 Poor Performance ... I am sensitive on that .... and it is even worse...
>>
>>                 Take care
>>                 Akira
>>
>>                 2012/8/13, drwhiet at spacefriends.de <mailto:drwhiet at spacefriends.de> <drwhiet at spacefriends.de
>>                 <mailto:drwhiet at spacefriends.de>>:
>>
>>                     Hi Akira,
>>
>>                     Why are you banning Singularity ?
>>
>>                     Best regards
>>                     Wordfromthe Wise
>>
>>                     On 13.08.2012, at 00:25, Akira Sonoda <akira.sonoda.1 at gmail.com <mailto:akira.sonoda.1 at gmail.com>>
>>                     wrote:
>>
>>                         Hi Fleep,
>>
>>                         First, banning viewers is not a good thing, especially not on osgrid,
>>                         because osgrid is here for testing the OpenSimulator under real life usage
>>                         and as far as i know OpenSim wants to support all of the viewers floating
>>                         around.
>>
>>                         Buuuuut ... it is really annoying to have a sim crashing when you have a
>>                         party with some 15 to 30 people partying. Therefore I enabled on one of
>>                         the 50 sims i am maintaining, the following rules:
>>
>>                         AllowedClients="Phoenix|Imprudence|Cool|Singularity|Firestorm|0.6.3"
>>                         BannedClients="Singularity 1.7"
>>
>>                         Those should support most of the used viewers:
>>                         http://www.flickr.com/photos/akirasonoda/7769188218/
>>
>>                         Firestorm is in, because many people use it. This is the riskiest part
>>                         because with my avatar i crash ( or at least produce ACK timeouts for all
>>                         viewers ) the sims all the time using the latest Firestorm.
>>
>>                         If you have your own grid, then you can apply viewer restrictions on grid
>>                         level.
>>
>>                         Take care,
>>                         Akira
>>
>>
>>                         2012/8/9 Fleep Tuque <fleep513 at gmail.com <mailto:fleep513 at gmail.com>>
>>                         Hi all,
>>
>>                         I was wondering if anyone was willing to share their list of banned
>>                         viewers used in the config files for Opensim?  I don't know what the
>>                         latest and greatest bad viewers are (or really any of them since I don't
>>                         use them!), but if anyone has a good list, I for one would appreciate the
>>                         info.
>>
>>                         For the record, I understand that the banned viewer list in the config can
>>                         be overridden by a savvy griefer, so it's not air tight security, but I
>>                         figure any effort to combat it doesn't hurt..
>>
>>                         Thanks in advance!
>>
>>                         - Chris/Fleep
>>
>>
>>                         Chris M. Collins (SL/OS: Fleep Tuque)
>>                         Center for Simulations & Virtual Environments Research (UCSIM)
>>                         UCIT Instructional & Research Computing
>>                         University of Cincinnati
>>                         406A Zimmer Hall
>>                         315 College Drive
>>                         PO BOX 210088
>>                         Cincinnati, OH 45221-0088
>>                         chris.collins at uc.edu <mailto:chris.collins at uc.edu>
>>                         (513) 556-3018 <tel:%28513%29%20556-3018>
>>
>>                         http://ucsim.uc.edu
>>
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>>
>>             --
>>             Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
>>             http://justincc.org/blog
>>             http://twitter.com/justincc
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-- 
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
http://justincc.org/blog
http://twitter.com/justincc



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