unresponsive simulators

We've had a number of sims recently fall into what is known as a "deep think" where the time to compute some physical event takes a very long time. The symptoms of a deep think are an unresponsive simulator that does not give you the "You have been logged out..." message and you can't move (or you can't stop moving). In some cases you may still be able to chat and IM but be unable to go anywhere.

One problem with a "deep think" is that it does not generate a corefile and there are almost no clues as to the why or how. A bug is hard to find, fix, and verify as fixed if we don't know how to reproduce it.

If anyone has an clues about how these events might have been triggered please post below and I'll try to use the information to solve the problem. Thanks.

Well I think I'm responsible for 3 of these events

In all three cases, it was preceded by a gathering of people. 6 to 10 people each time.

Not much info, but the only remarkable thing about the incidents... is that nothing remarkable was going on. We were an extraordinarily well-behaved group

Thanks,
Candie

I have been working on a physical car which has been seriously lagging some sims. I dont think we crashed any last night, but, I know we crashed Kissling a few times before last week.

Each time I get the "fly off the end of the world bug" its when I enter a new sim. I have noticed since 7.0 started I almost always have close to 0 bandwidth and have to restart the game several times a day.

Candie, it is possible that someone in another corner of the sim caused some of the hang-ups. Are you saying that you noticed that yours was the only group on the map? There is some evidence that some deep thinks can be triggered by getting up after sitting on some objects. Where were you gathered, and what were people sitting on?

James, your car causing lag is something I need to look into, however I'm currently focusing on "deep thinks" which could be categorized as REALLY BAD LAG, so bad that your connection to the servers can time-out. Do you think your car ever made the sime totally unresponsive, or just lag noticibly? Do you have a copy of the car in the world? Or is it in your inventory?

Crimson, your problem may be related to deep-thinks in that you may be trying to enter a sim that is currently thinking, however it is not clear enough from your description.

I didn't see any other groups on the map, which I was watching to see if any others were on their way.

1st time we were gathered in my living room. I don't specifically recall anyone sitting, but I would imagine several were. I have a number of 'sittable' surfaces that are fun to try out.

2nd time I don't think anyone was sitting. Standing while I read a trivia question.

3rd time several people were trying to sit in my hot tub and having a hard time doing it. There are benches under the water, and it's hard to 'reach' under the water and 'grab' them to sit on them. So people were sitting on the sides, which are plain blocks. Also a number of people were changing their avs (changing into bathing suits) if that might have something to do with it.

Hmmm... I just recalled that the living room and hot tub room are the only places I have scripts. And the same scripts in each: water animation and phantom on one object, and fire on another.

Hmmmm again... I've got 2 separate scripts for animation and phantom in one object and i've been meaning to ask if i could/should put it all into 1 script.

If anyone who was there can provide more detail, please chime in.

Thanks,
Candie

As to candie's situation, I can verify that I was sitting just before the sim went into a deep think. I stood up, started to walk backwards up the stairs, and suddenly noticed that I couldnt stop. I kept going straight through the roof. When I looked at bandwidth, it was 0, so, I relogged.

Ok, thanks guys. I've found a reproducible case (moving a sufficiently complicated object into interpenetration with your agent) that causes a medium sized deep think and am on the trail. Jame's "stand up" event may have been the cause of one of Candie's incidents.

Candie, two separate scripts is not a problem, especially if one is managing phantom and the other is managing texture animiation ==> that was the goal of supporting multiple scripts. However, if you had two scripts each providing a hover, or if both scripts were manipulating the same aspect of the object then the scripts may fight. Most likely you would get unexpected behavior when the assumptions of one script were not valid.

I have been flying around in my pineapple balloon I purchased from Steller Sunshine. However, I did modify the script somewhat, although that shouldn't make a big difference.

I can't seem to remember if I had been using my balloon during any of the multitude of 'deep-think'-like incidents yesterday.

Although I believe Shipley went into 'Deep-Think' while I was attempting to start moving my balloon. I was near Tae's giant tree, and my balloon seemed to fall down the side of the mountain then stop. Nothing could move but I could still chat. So I'm guessing this was a 'deep-think' crash.

I navigated across the grid east to west from Hawthorne to Dore, with some stops and tangents in the middle, I probably visited at least 1/3 of the sims.

However there didn't seem to be any problems at the time, the crashing seemed to occur hours after I had de-rezzed my balloon (or more correctly after it flew off-world in Dore)

Feel free to contact me and check out my script or take over my acct or whatnot if I'm not online.

I believe the script is 'balloon 1.2' and I have given a few copies out to people.

--Bino Arbuckle

EDIT: We sit on the edges of my balloon basket when we fly as the ride tends to toss people out... however sometimes people hit the wrong key and stand up and fall out... don't know if there is a causal relationship, but since you mentioned sitting...

got my sim into a deep think 1:20am the 16th

was only person in the sim i saw, had just gotten up from sitting


could still use ims to bitch about crashing after the login servers went down though heh