SL Cache causing disconnects/drops?

Since I can't get technical support to budge beyond thinking we're all too stupid to know how to uninstall our firewalls as a investigative measure, and I'm sick and tired of them sqwalking 'it's you, not us' at me, I've had to conclude I'll get no help from them.

Sooo.... I've been trying every suggested solution I can find, both from metaverse veterans as well as the support wiki. Until last night, nothing has helped.

Upon deciding to test deleting my cache before every session, I discovered that I am being dropped every time my cache hits the limit set by me in 'preferences'.

This has been verified to happen at every setting (50mb, 200mb, 500mb, 1000mb).

It is consistant and recreatable.

It happens to at least four others I know who are experiencing this issue.

The four of us have systems that are nothing at all alike (different CPU speeds, memory, version of Windows, etc.).

For each of us, turning cache preferences up to 1000mb fixes the issue AS LONG AS WE DO NOT BUILD OR WORK WITH TEXTURES OR GO TOO MANY PLACES.

Obviously, this is not a very good workaround. There needs to either be a way to clear the cache regularly during play.

Okay, so you believe you found the problem, which is great. *big smile* But, as you can see, it was NOT a server side problem, just as I and others said we believed it was not. So, maybe some of us "know-it-alls" actually know a few things. *grin*

I am still not so sure it's a problem with this specific download, as I don't think your cache or how the cache is managed changed with the update. Perhaps I am wrong on that. The good thing is that you may well have found a long standing problem that accounts for people crashing and having to regularly relog. Thanks for posting what you found, as I plan on increasing my cache size to let me play longer before failures, since I doubt we will see a fix anytime soon.

Linden, if you guys are looking at this thread, please investigate the cache system, per the results Cienna Samiam has identified. I concur that there very likely is a problem in this area, based on the overall problems we see with people crashing and needing to relog when strange things happen, like people disappearing, inventory being lost, things not rezzing, etc.

bump for some sort of LL response.

Don't see you mention you've filed a bug report ?

If you don't file a bug report chances are it won't get fixed.

File a bug report describing how to recreate the bug and include a link to this thread.

There are a couple things that could cause the problems Cienna is seeing.

1. Agressive Anti-Virus (or other application that monitors disk writes)
   
2. Not enough CPU time (slow computer)
   
3. Cache on Encrypted/Compressed volume
   
4. Slow HD or Controller
   
5. Not enough memory in the system.
   

When the cache fills up the client does cache cleanup and removes some of the assets from it (how it decides is beyond me, LL should really look into this; i would do it by removing old half loaded textures first). Personaly I think your computer is too slow or you need to disable your anti-virus when you play SL.

Anyway tell us about your system or post your SL logfile, it should shed some light.

I don't know that I've ever seen this work. The forums are rife with "I sent mail to support and all I got was this auto-response".

Personally, I used to file the sort of bug reports I would have liked to have received in a former life as a developer which usually results in a batch closure with no resolution upon major point releases (as in, this was submitted against X.Y and we're on X.Y+1 now so we'll assume it is fixed).

The only ways I've known people to get reliable responses - even if it is "we don't know" is through their phone support or Hotline to Linden.

I will note that in my experience Strife is typically uncannilly correct (and makes really cool kinetic art too).

Good luck.

Odd... I have a 50MB cache (running on a laptop). I shouldn't even be able to get my foot in the door. ;^)

I'll check with QA to see if they know any common causes along these lines.

In defense of what Cienna Samiam claims regarding the cache file, the problem may be related to the data in her cache. I used to see this in older versions of the Windows system too, where something in the cache (virtual memory) would make the system very unstable. Rebooting would have a limitied effect in resolving the problem, but I found from time to time I just had to recreate the cache file, and invariably at some point the problem would return.

1) no anti-virus
2) 3.0Ghz PIV
3) No compression on the volume
4) 72000 HD
5) 1gb memory

Sorry, wrong on all counts.

you didn't answer the HD controller part of number 4.
72000 is just how fast the drive spins, doesn't tell us how fast the controler attach to it is.

On that IDE chain what other devices are there?
Is the IDE controler on a PCI card?

Is your HD defragmented? If the cache is split across the volume it can negatively effect performance (as the drive will have to thrash to read it).

72000 ?, *bops Strife* holy hell that would be one hot drive i thought my scsi ones at 15.000 where fast , 7200

Is this a new Sata2 Hitatchi drive?,

managed to something odd with the one i have, so i returned it, got reallly slow when i did several things in SL, i mean,, realllly slow, or my mb is just to crapola to handle it, maybe bad drivers or something but i just had it for "borrow" anyway

Theres no doubt something messing with your cache if this is why you crash, i run with every diffrent cache, and never crashed cause of it.

Err your Virtual memory setting is it
Custom size, (same sizes) or
System Managed size? (i avoid this one)

Sorry folks, think I'm going to let the people with the real info help on this one. Turns out I'm onto something. So I'm sure you'll hear about it when they patch for it.

Oh, and special thanks to the folks who took the typo of an extra 0 waaaaay too seriously. That was a good laugh and that's always nice in the morning.

*shrug* they aren't always quick about making patches. I have no expectation of LL fixing this before 1.7.1 but my pessimism is based on past experiences, things could have changed. Really inspirational calling us hacks when we try to help you, really makes me want to help you.

But i humbly submit the record of this situation as it's been the forum dwellers submiting suggestions and diagnosese not LL.

*shakes head*

Excuse me, but could you kindly quote me calling ANYONE a name here?

Please try not to read more than is written, thanks. I bowed out because I'm over people acting like they're the only ones who know anything about computers and frankly, I'm sick of people who have no idea what I have or what I've tried telling me they 'know what is wrong' or 'know I probably haven't X, Y, Z.'

Not to mention the snideness of posts like the one that engendered this response.

In case someone missed it, people don't post here to be told they don't know enough. People post here to be helped.

Finally, you assume FAR too much. Just because all YOU see is forum posters contributing doesn't mean that is all that is happening.

Sheesh.

You in one fell swoop said the people who posted on your thread know nothing and the only people who do are LL.

In the first sentence you say you are leaving it to those who know what they are talking about. Then in the third you go onto say that the same people will patch this and we will hear about it. Since hacks to the client are rarely publicized, you must have been referring to a patch coming from LL. Since we now know who you were talking about as having "real info", this infers the rest of us don't know what we are talking about.

"The people with the real info" are LL, plain and simple. I'm sorry if that offends you. The rest of your inferences and assumptions are not based in the reality of what I wrote. They're yours, not mine, and you're welcome to them.

for further forum posts you dont want anyone to give tips and experiences,

label it "LL replies only" so i can ignore your posts next time, since you obviously dont appriciate anyone trying to help except the oh mighty LL

Altima, you wanted to know why I don't bother with this forum.... See above. I won't be participating any further in this particular forum and maybe LL would want to keep in mind the chilling effect of rude posters who do more to drive out interest in opening or maintaining what would otherwise be a helpful dialogue.

Thanks.