Folder called cache

This folder is taking up 2 GB on my hard drive and I was wondering if there was anything in the folder I could delete.

SL should clear this out when you uninstall - just uninstall and re-install and it should go down to about 200MB.

BUT, if you're comfortable with the windows command line, you can help us out by first sending us a directory listing for that folder. SL shouldn't be using that much disk space, and I'd like to find out what's in there. Do this, substituting the location of the SL cache dir:

dir c:\mycachedir > cache.txt

You can then send the cache.txt to [email]support@lindenlab.com[/email], and mention my name. But if you're not sure how to do this, don't worry about it.

I have my cache size set to 200MB, and there is indeed a 200MB file called data.db2.x.5906 as well as a 1MB file called index.db2.x.5906. Evidently data/index.db2.x is the important part, and the last number seems arbitrary. The rest of the files have the extensions .bodypart, .clothing, or .wav. All of the files of those types are evidently named for their UUID ("00112d0e-b55b-ac8b-80ca-f15d6d25c523.wav" for example), which makes sense. Clothing and Bodypart files are tiny at 1 or 2K. The WAV files are relatively gigantic (44.1KHz 16 bit mono), often weighing in at almost 900K for a 10-second file.

Listening to them, I've found they're all shorter than 10 seconds, of course, and the experience of listening to many many 10-second clips is like listening to the radio with a terribly short attention span and a twitchy hand on the knob. It's a mix of default gesture sounds, default ambient sounds, sounds I've and my SL friends have uploaded, and mostly music (chopped up into 10-second clips) that I'v eheard playing (either in my presence or because I flew over a house playing the sound).

The result, though, is staggering. Between 5/19 and 6/3 I accumulated 1695 wav files totalling 1.13GB (that's 3 hours 33 minutes of attention-deficit entertainment). My HD can take it, but not everybody's can, and it's definitely more than I bargained for when I selected a 200MB cache. While I don't mind all these files, a little disclosure is in order, as well as some way of expiring sounds that go un-heard for a while. (Thanks Kathy Yamamoto for that idea) Also, I'm not sure it's necessarily for these sound fiiles to be full-size WAV files. I know they are compressed using the Ogg Vorbis codec for transfer, so why can't these files be cached in compressed form and decoded on the fly for playback? (Or maybe they are compressed in the db2 file.)

Also, does anyone know how to change the location of this cache? It would probably be easier to change it on the OS level by adjusting the registry, but perhaps the release version of SecondLife could locate the cache elsewhere, such as in a faster drive (RAM drive?!), or a drive with more room available. The default is C:/documents and settings/username/application data/second life/cache for 2K/XP, or somewhere under windows/profiles/username for Win9x users, I'd guess. Any ideas where to look into this? (The usual caveats about registry editing apply: you can really hose your system by messing around in regedit without knowing what you're doing, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.)

Two quick comments:

1. This is a bug. Thank you for the detective work! We should not be leaving the .wav, .bodypart, and .clothing files behind during normal operation.

2. Please feel free to delete all of these files. The *.cached_inventory, data.db2.* and index.db2.* are the only ones you really want there.

Sorry for the trouble!
Aaron

So hey, this 'bug' is still happening I think

That's correct. This bug hasn't been fixed yet. We're knockin' bugs down in priority order, so if this bug is causing you a lot of grief, let us know.

Aaron

No, its no grief

Just that my C drive is pretty small and my D drive is massive but the cache wants to be on C (and i dont relish reinstalling the OS and every app again to change drives )

This was why I placed tech support question Reference #030710-000000 some time ago - the huge cache files fill up my C: partition, even though I have SL installed on another drive.

Typically, I just periodically go through and delete the WAV files - this generally reclaims several hundred meg at a shot - but it's really irritating, and I'd like to have this data located somewhere else besides C:, or better controlled so it doesn't kill me spacewise. Oh pretty please please fix this somehow someway.

I can live with it, but geez... In the meantime I'll just HAVE to upgrade my hard disk and make larger partitions ...

=SV

With Windoze XP you can have UNIX-like mountpoints, i.e. mount another partition as your C:\Documents and Settings\Lusername\Application Data\SecondLife\cache\ (Disk Management -> Change Drive Letter and Paths).

It's also fairly trivial to have the *.wav/*.ls?/*.cothing/*.bodypart files deleted automatically at each launch of SL :)

Both are acceptable workarounds ( mount point assuming you have sufficient disk space somewhere, of course ) - but I'd rather see a user-configuration option appear in which we can specify where said cache files go, like many other programs have. I monkey around with software and systems quite enough in my day job, thank you very much...

Recently (08/20), the Lindens said in response to my support question (below) that support for relocating cache was being considered for 1.1; not sure if it got in - I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Still, thanks Ezhar for the ideas... way to think outside the 95% hollow scripted cube.

=SV

I believe that you can also simply change the location of the home directory for specific users, instead of using mountpoints - I think this is done to allow support for network mounted home directories (among other things). Try searching for "home directory" in the system help.

I haven't tried this myself, but since we're querying windows to find the location of the user directory, doing this should work fine.

- Doug