Help us to help you diagnose problems: Discussion

As I cannot reply to this post in Hotline to Linden I figured I'd try to spare the poster some wasted effort. The poster very generously wants to help and said in part:They have all the data they could possibly use and then some. There's two major problems: 1) much of what you see as "bugs" are actually "optimizations" (pessimizations?) to reduce load on a system operating way past its design limits by just declining to do certain operations on some basis that we'll never understand, and 2) things like the texture cache are borked and it doesn't appear as if anyone knows how to debug it.

This is, of course, presuming that LL is in fact interested in improving their not-ready-for-prime-time service. At this point it is not clear that they are so interested.

I can agree with that.
But I also agree with the hotline post.

I imagine if we had more info on data we have access to , we could perhaps provide more detailed info to the developers to help them diagnose and kill bugs though. Working with computers as long as I have, I can tell you it is difficult to diagnose a problem based upon what a customer says. Give the customer diagnostic tools and teach em how to read the data that the tool spit out when there is a problem and the info they give vs the actual problem becomes so much clearer. Prime example, Dell has Diagnostic utilities on a bootable CD that if you can at least get your computer to boot up and run the diags it will check the hardware and spit out a code that you inform Dell of and they use that to determine the problem. LL has given us these tools in the Debug Menu but they are not clearly documented on how to use them. If I could submit a complaint straight to a Linden with the exact data that I am reading, that relates 100% to my problem with observable facts and data, then most likely the problem can get addressed properly. It is difficult to diagnose a problem with "I am getting bad lag"
If I knew how to read the tools, then perhaps I could solve some of my own problems like say a script gone out of hand or a bad/corrupt texture or whatever without contacting a Linden at all.

It's like this in my view:
LL has given us a damn fine car to drive around in. They have put in all the proper parts and even a gold plated oil dipstick. They just forgot to put the hash marks on the oil dipstick so we can see where the oil level is compared to where it should be. Big difference in having oil and having enough oil.

The OP to the Hotline... me ...has a lot of years experience, working with, and developing on, computers. Given the tools and minimal guidance I can gather just about any kind of diagnostic information that's deemed useful. Given some documentation I might even be able to usefully tell you what the problem is, and I strongly suspect that within the SL community that there are many others who can do this a lot better than me... there are some very smart cookies in SL!

What I hate is having to sit here when I can see there is problem and having to speculate as to whether it is a known problem that I can in fact do absolutely nothing about.

What I hate is installing upgrade after upgrade that introduce what feels like random improvements and random problems.

What I hate is the way Linden Labs let slip little crumbs of information rather than debating issues in an open and straight forward manner.

What I hate is the lack of input in the Technical Forum from representatives of LL who instead seem to prefer to use routes that actually make it impossible to have any public discussion by design.

With the advent of 1.8 my SL client isn't even trying to completely download textures. My bandwidth usage has plummeted. This isn't a lag thing, this is an all-your-going-to-get thing. Maybe it is the result of some kind of throttling... um, I mean... optimisation but unless LL have the courage to participate in the debate then ultimately all any of us can do is speculate while waiting for the next upgrade to arrive.

I already know I am, if not actually wasting my effort, clutching at straws unless LL are prepared to meet its customers half way in helping us to trobleshoot their client.

They used to do that a lot more often than they do now. I imagine they stopped partly because they're a lot busier now than they used to be, and because the most vocal compaliners would always do their damndest to make sure the conversation got derailed, veered off into discussion about imagined conspiracies, or just generally resulted in people yelling at each other. It's hard to find consensus that way. See the current thread about the IRC channel for reference.

I have every sympathy if LL choose not to be drawn into subjective debate - I feel nervous just posting in the General Forum and I'm a nobody! I'm talking about fundermental technical issues here not who should, or should not, be allowed on some IRC channel I know nothing about.

Hehe, you'd be amazed how people can take something that's purely objective and make it subjective. I do agree with you though. The more useful information available to the community the better. Don't ever be afraid to express your opinions on the forums. They're every bit as valid as anyone elses

Pale, first of all, posting as civilly as you do, you should have no worries about posting at all.

I too very much shared your interest in helping them help themselves and won't even go into the myriad ways I'd tried to. As I know a little about networking, I tried to help them diagnose a connectivity problem which as of this posting is still present in exactly the manner characterized and confirmed by someone across the pond.

I'd given up trying to be helpful when the Philip himself jumped in and described in that thread - a month ago - how they were going to look exactly where we showed the problem wasn't. I'm not real surprised they didn't solve the issue.

I like the dipstick analogy above; perhaps Strife or Nathan can add some insight as to how to read those things. As to the texture loading slowness, there appears to be some flaw in what they call the "interest list" for what your client wants to see. To my knowledge that list is not exposed.