Kirsten Viewer S21(7a) Release Review

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KirstenLee S20 Logo
Kirsten S21(7)

Today (5/11) the release of S21(7a) or 2.7.8.7 came out. This is version 7a because the Lab alerted viewer developers that an exploit was found in the Second Life System. Unpatched viewers are vulnerable to the exploit. Kirsten’s 7a has the patch and is safe from this exploit. If you downloaded (7), go back and get (7a).

Build 7 has a load of new features and fixes. I’ll touch on those I find interesting. The list of them is here: Kirsten Viewer Release Notes. These are not necessarily the first appearance of these features. Some will be familiar to you if you have used the 7 RC’s.

Kirsten’s code includes SL 2.6.8 code items. My latest development viewer from SL only shows 2.6.7. So, this may be the most leading edge viewer available.

This version has Enhanced Avatar Physics. In other words; Boobies Bounce.

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Warning Will Roger!!!

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WARNING!!!

In Second Life we have a minor crisis today. There is an exploit that someone figured out. They are griefing the grid with it now. It is unclear how long this exploit has been around. You need to take action now.

The Problem

Red Hat Security Advisory is out. See: https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2009-1561.html This is an old issue as it was first found 2009. I suppose it just recently came to the Linden’s attention when someone figured out how to implement the exploit in SL.

If you are not a Linux user, you may not know that Red Hat is a flavor of Linux. They broke the news on the exploit.

The problem is in a part of the viewer code library libvorbis. It has runtime libraries for programs that support Ogg Vorbis. A type of sound file compression that SL uses. Presumably Windows users are the primary risk. But, the exploit door is in a library that Windows, Mac, and Linux use.

Multiple flaws were found in the libvorbis library. A specially-crafted Ogg Vorbis media format file (Ogg) could cause an application using libvorbis to crash or, possibly, execute arbitrary code when opened. (CVE-2009-3379)

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The SL World is About to Change

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Yesterday we got word that by the end of the month we will have the time table for mesh release. Along with mesh we have other features that will arrive too. Some we know about. Others we have only had hints of. But, there are significant changes coming to Second Life.

Changing Second Life
Changing Worlds - By Paul J Everett @ Flickr

I’ve told you about the coming changes I’ve discovered over the past weeks. I doubt I’ve discovered them all. The Linden’s in the various teams hint at other coming changes and new features. We obviously are only being told about the changes the Lab feels will directly affect merchants or the economy.

The Big Change

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SL Mesh Status Week 19

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Movement on the mesh project appears slow right now. The effort is going toward combining the mesh code and regular simulator and viewer code and the effort to get it all to compile using VS2010. So, we aren’t seeing many new bug fixes or features. Still the project is moving forward.

SL Mesh Objects
Mesh Objects

Set Backs

Regression testing over the last week revealed some complex problems the team worked to get corrected, apparently taking more effort than anyone expected. While it adds nothing new it is progress.

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Second Life Mono2 Changes

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Kelly Linden announced on the 6th that big changes had been made to Mono2 on the ADITI grid as a preliminary test of a potential fix before moving on to testing in the AGNI Release Channel. Some of these changes have been in progress for some time.

Sim Stalling is a problem we saw when Mono was introduced to the grid. Rezzing a Mono script could pause the sim for 5 to 30 seconds. This was a disaster in combat regions when a weapon was firing 8 to 12 prims bullets per second and 20 guns were firing. Very quickly weapons with Mono scripted bullets were outlawed. The problem was not just with weapons but any script rezzed in a region. Crossing region boundaries with an AO compiled in Mono also created problems.

Kelly is saying they have the issue resolved. Mono scripts should no longer stall the sim. There are still some performance hits as LSL scripts rez and de-rez in a region.

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