Second Life Bits 2014-19

Servers

There are no roll outs this week.

Viewers

The main viewer remains: 3.7.6-289164

RC Viewers

No changes since the last report.

Bit of News

Jo Yardely posts about Ebbe’s saying new avatars are coming. Originally he said they would arrive in March. It looks like they will get released this month now. So, we will have more ‘Library Starter Avatars.’ This will make it easier for new users to not look so noobie.

That of course assumes they don’t walk around nude flashing everyone. (face palm)

[youtube BNsrK6P9QvI] 

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Second Life News 2014-17 #3

Viewers

The main SL viewer updated a few days ago, Monday I think. It is now version: 3.7.6-289164. This is the combined Merchant Outbox, Vivox voice, and Breakpad viewer. Mac users should get some relief using this version.

A bot at Server-Scripting UG 2014-17
A bot at Server-Scripting UG 2014-17

RC Viewers

Interesting Viewer version 3.7.7.289461 – This viewer is currently the best performing of the RC viewers and looks like the next candidate to be promoted. But, the Lab is not planning to make another release for a couple of weeks, that likely means week 19 or May 5. So, things could change.

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Second Life News 2014-15 #3

Viewers

The current main viewer is version 3.7.5-288464. This is the Google Breakpad RC Viewer promoted to the main release viewer. If you dig around in the log files section you’ll find more ‘marker files’ and more logged information. The Lindens have moved the start of logging, no easy task, further toward the beginning of viewer start  up and the end of shutdown.

Marker files are uniquely named and often have no data inside or very little. The purpose of the files is to basically leave breadcrumb trail for the error reporting process to follow. They are written because if the viewer crashes it often won’t be able to log an error. So, at certain points a ‘marker file’ is written so the next time the crash reporter runs, which is before viewer actually starts, it can check to see what the viewer did in its last run and report when it crashed. The marker file gives some idea of how far the viewer got in its process before crashing.

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Second Life and the Mac WebKit Problem

Me... a Protester?
Me… a Protester?

 My readers will know Mac users have a problem. There is no near term solution to the problem for several reasons. Even more confusing is there are multiple problems. And today a group approached me hoping to put together a movement to show Linden Lab the extent of the problem and the interest in getting it fixed.

So, I’m scratching my head wondering if the Lab is in a position to fix the problem… and which problem are we talking about? Since I’m not a Mac user, I’m probably not the best one to write this, but no one else seems to be covering it.

I’ve touched on Mac issues in the past; Second Life News 2013-11, Firestorm Viewer News 2014-7, Viewer Release Pipeline Update, and others. The SL Viewer and Third Party Viewers are moving to support Apple’s Cocoa frame work or may be I should say did so move in 2013. But, that has left Apple users on older operating systems behind. SL apparently has problems running in the older Apple OS’s. This has resulted in Apple users staying with older viewer versions.

As we near another release of the Firestorm Viewer those issues are coming to a crisis point for some users. The recent blocking of Firestorm 4.4.0 is bringing home the point of the team only allowing 3 versions to run on the SL grid and blocking older versions. People are getting the idea the team is actually blocking older viewers. 

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