At wit's end.

I'm having crashes very frequently, and I think I've tracked down at least one possible source.

2004-02-12T03:49:13Z INFO Preloading a3c6d831-a156-872f-b4f2-098974a23458 queue length: 0
2004-02-12T03:49:13Z INFO xfer from 63.211.151.47:12035 complete: VFile b0886b09-5492-5600-ff7e-b1a23af4b119ound
2004-02-12T03:49:14Z INFO Requesting VFile 9f0bbe2e-78b7-a2cd-3ab8-8e97abac03f7ound
2004-02-12T03:49:14Z WARNING BAD vorbis decode in decodeSection.
2004-02-12T03:49:14Z WARNING b0886b09-5492-5600-ff7e-b1a23af4b119 has invalid vorbis data, aborting decode

Twice now, I've had errors come across that were related to the Vorbis components in the software. Now, this is only on my PC sysstem. I haven't checked the logs for crashes under Mac OSX because I haven't found out where they'd be. (I can only manage the patience to try and communicate errors with -one- platform before I give up. :/)

This hasn't been my only or even largest problem however. For the second time in as many days, I have lost folders in my inventory. Earlier tonight I crashed out, again, and when I attempted to reconnect it told me that my Inventory had not finished downloading, so please not to use any building tools or change my appearance. I simply let SL sit for a few seconds and didn't do anything except watch my Inventory folder every once in a while. Giving up on that, I pushed the up arrow key to move, took two steps and crashed.

Having had a bad feeling about that, I immediately logged back in and checked my inventory. My Objects folder and Lost and Found folders are now both missing, for the second time. I understand that video problems may be the majority of the issues with SL, but I'm really about 99% certain that this has nothing to do with my video system. (GeForce FX 5200 with drivers at 45.23 after rolling them back from 53.03 and 53.06, just to head off those followups.)

The people I've talked to in game, especially Phoenix and Char Linden, have been very attentive at tryring to help me out, but I'm seriously concerned that this might be a much lower level problem than that. I do have a background in programming support, and while I don't consider myself an expert by any means I do have a few theories about at least some portions of the problem I'm seeing. If someone could let me know even if they -think- I might be on the right track or not, I'd appreciate it. There's nothing I hate worse than feeling left out in the cold with major software issues right after I pay for it. (I signed up one-time not even 24 hours after starting my trial)

It appears to me that the problem with inventory might be permissions or lock based. My Inventory had problems downloading to my PC, and as it attempted to sync from the server, the connection was lost due to yet another crash. Did this leave the permissions or share settings on the server copy of this information screwed up? Phoenix said the last time that my Lost and Found folder suddenly had the files from my other directories inside it. Knowing that Linux is used as the backend, is what I am looking at with that inventory folder simply a represenation of a home directory, with that system being used for file storage? If so, is this a programming glitch, a filesystem error, or is there something causing issues translating between the two? I know this will be way over the head of a lot of people, and probably way off base, but I kinda felt like I needed to at least air my thoughts before I imploded and just gave up for good.

I really don't like having between 10-20 crashes per day, and I don't enjoy having to manually flush the cache into the trash a few times a day because the crashes are leaving unused copies of the cache file sitting in place. I especially don't want to lose my inventory items again, because I may wind up with something of value someday. Last time, the only unrecovered item I think I lost was a motorcycle worth maybe 50 L$. I really would not want to find myself without 90% of my belonings permanently someday.

Please let me know if anyone has ideas on this, or if there's any way I can help Linden Labs diagnose the problem. Once is a fluke that might not happen again, twice means there's a major software failure someplace. I'd like to find it, please.

Ahh, the joys of alpha programs...

Well, as a coder, I can tell you that the Linden team is incredibly quick. Just email LL with your problems, and it will most likely be addressed in the next patch. Good luck getting it to work, and I hope to see you in-world in one peice soon!

BTW: At Wit's End it one of my favorite text based games

Phoenix Linden was able to help me with getting my items back the last time this happened, and I mailed again today. Hopefully, what with the new sims and land rush and all, they'll be able to find some time to help out. I'd be more than willing to beta-test anything they've got that even -might- fix this problem. It's just that rough.

As of midnight tonight I started logging and detailing every crash I encounter. I'm giving up at the moment and am going to head to bed, but wanted to post this for future reference. It's become pretty clear that there are issues with the sound implementation, but now it's looking like there could be some kind of network error as well? Anyhow, here's the text of my current log, including the tail ends of the secondlife.log file after some of the more significant errors.

HALT indicates a time when I was forced to kill the task, HALT/GPF indicates a dialog being displayed by newview.exe allowing me to debug or close.

12:19AM HALT/GPF At the Trivia Game
12:22AM HALT/GPF Chatting at the Ahern/Morris Telepad
12:23AM GPF on precache stage.
12:23AM GPF at Inventory download - after hearing sound

2004-02-12T05:24:02Z INFO LLInventoryModel:rocessInventoryFile()
2004-02-12T05:24:02Z INFO LLInventoryModel::deleteObject()
2004-02-12T05:24:02Z INFO LLInventoryModel::loadFromFile()
2004-02-12T05:24:02Z WARNING Bad UUID string: 188663b1-7032-a0fb-froup_id

12:25AM Returned to game, textures not right. Took a snapshot. Have not self-corrected
and items that should have been cached do not seem to be so. Uploaded jacket texture
still has not recovered after this error.
12:31AM At the Trivia Game

2004-02-12T05:31:30Z INFO Preloading 90cc1e2d-4b76-f410-74b8-a3e86248beb1 queue length: 0
2004-02-12T05:31:31Z INFO xfer from 63.211.151.47:12035 complete: VFile 4b5e7a96-3dc4-46bf-28a2-ed1af324eef3ound
2004-02-12T05:31:31Z WARNING BAD vorbis decode in decodeSection.
2004-02-12T05:31:31Z WARNING 4b5e7a96-3dc4-46bf-28a2-ed1af324eef3 has invalid vorbis data, aborting decode

01:03AM HALT after examining note card "Note: Falling Leaves" in Avalon.

2004-02-12T06:03:11Z INFO Requesting VFile cfcdf784-97c3-57aa-06f6-0f7a93fddc7b:notecard
2004-02-12T06:03:12Z INFO xfer from 63.211.151.88:12035 complete: VFile cfcdf784-97c3-57aa-06f6-0f7a93fddc7b:notecard
2004-02-12T06:03:12Z INFO LLPreviewNotecard:nLoadComplete()
2004-02-12T06:03:14Z INFO LLInventoryModel:rocessUpdateInventoryItem() item id:5b60bad5-53e3-9e5a-cc98-5e8ba5b7dca3

01:09AM HALT on the gondola ride in Avalon, passing beneath the Maxx Tower.

2004-02-12T06:08:39Z INFO LLCacheName - got first Francis last Chung id 2b048a24-2737-4994-9fa5-becc8e466253 at 47.3657
2004-02-12T06:08:41Z INFO Loading keyframe data for: turnleft
2004-02-12T06:08:44Z INFO Circuit: 63.211.151.88:12035 resent 2 packets
2004-02-12T06:08:51Z INFO Key up event missed, resetting
2004-02-12T06:08:52Z INFO Loading keyframe data for: turnright
2004-02-12T06:08:53Z INFO LLCacheName - got first Sapphire last Bombay id a9e070bc-8ada-49f0-9b87-29d4a52b2b75 at 61.612
2004-02-12T06:09:07Z INFO Key up event missed, resetting
2004-02-12T06:09:08Z INFO Discarding duplicate resend from 63.211.151.88:12035
2004-02-12T06:09:10Z INFO Requesting xfer from 63.211.151.88:12035 for file: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\SecondLife\cache\inventory_6c73eb1f-4d0d-6be4-14d0-de0e617bf740.tmp
2004-02-12T06:09:10Z INFO xfer from 63.211.151.88:12035 complete: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\SecondLife\cache\inventory_6c73eb1f-4d0d-6be4-14d0-de0e617bf740.tmp
2004-02-12T06:09:10Z INFO LLCacheName - got group name Artistic Builders id 80c237bc-6107-441f-66fe-d92eed363ea1 at 78.4863
2004-02-12T06:09:11Z INFO Loading keyframe data for: sit
2004-02-12T06:09:12Z INFO LLCacheName - got first Nicola last Escher id 9a42e9ad-dc45-4531-abcf-e59ce9db959a at 80.6451
2004-02-12T06:09:14Z INFO Loading keyframe data for: stand_1
2004-02-12T06:09:21Z WARNING Unknown type of hud object:155
2004-02-12T06:09:21Z WARNING Received viewer effect of type
2004-02-12T06:09:23Z WARNING Object update from unknown region!
2004-02-12T06:09:25Z WARNING Ran off end of packet during message decode of ObjectUpdateCompressed
2004-02-12T06:09:27Z INFO Discarding duplicate resend from 63.211.151.88:12035
2004-02-12T06:09:28Z WARNING Object update from unknown region!
2004-02-12T06:09:29Z WARNING Unknown name value type string ‘ for LastName
2004-02-12T06:09:29Z WARNING Buffer overflow in BinaryBuffer length verify, field name TextureEntry!
2004-02-12T06:09:29Z WARNING Current pos: 89 Buffer size: 125 Data size: 1213661184

01:33AM HALT/GPF flying to Federal from nearby telepad. Nothing there was likely to
have been in my local cache.

2004-02-12T06:31:32Z INFO Preloading 917a2b7b-0bba-70c9-31f7-a167d1cf72a4 queue length: 0
2004-02-12T06:31:32Z WARNING Ran off end of packet during message decode of ViewerEffect
2004-02-12T06:31:32Z INFO Preloading af5a54e2-fb30-3bfc-a414-332fd6c7242f queue length: 0
2004-02-12T06:31:33Z INFO Preloading fd0e9a93-916d-e0e1-4c97-c08e5b55c445 queue length: 0
2004-02-12T06:31:34Z INFO Preloading 8bd25e32-a2ab-4cfd-21db-d548572bdc28 queue length: 0
2004-02-12T06:31:34Z WARNING Message #96 received but not registered!
2004-02-12T06:31:36Z INFO avatar f2b9de0f-3883-4d91-98da-6c69807a61a7 start culled
2004-02-12T06:31:36Z INFO Preloading 90cc1e2d-4b76-f410-74b8-a3e86248beb1 queue length: 0
2004-02-12T06:31:36Z WARNING Ran off end of packet during message decode of ParcelProperties
2004-02-12T06:31:36Z INFO Discarding duplicate resend from 63.211.151.32:12035
2004-02-12T06:31:36Z WARNING Message #107 received but not registered!
2004-02-12T06:31:37Z INFO Preloading 917a2b7b-0bba-70c9-31f7-a167d1cf72a4 queue length: 0
2004-02-12T06:31:37Z WARNING Ran off end of packet during message decode of ParcelProperties
2004-02-12T06:31:37Z WARNING Message #130 received but not registered!
2004-02-12T06:31:38Z WARNING Message #197 received but not registered!
2004-02-12T06:31:38Z INFO Preloading fd0e9a93-916d-e0e1-4c97-c08e5b55c445 queue length: 0
2004-02-12T06:31:38Z WARNING Ran off end of packet during message decode of ObjectUpdateCompressed
2004-02-12T06:31:39Z WARNING Object update from unknown region!
2004-02-12T06:31:39Z WARNING Ran off end of packet during message decode of ObjectUpdateCompressed
2004-02-12T06:31:40Z INFO Adding new region (1007:1001)
2004-02-12T06:31:40Z INFO Host: 63.211.151.33:12035
2004-02-12T06:31:40Z INFO simulator_enable() Enabling 63.211.151.33:12035 with code 6925
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z WARNING Message #0 received but not registered!
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z INFO Preloading 8bd25e32-a2ab-4cfd-21db-d548572bdc28 queue length: 0
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z INFO Kakadu Error:
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z INFO Malformed COD marker segment encountered. Invalid "Scod" value!
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z WARNING KDU throwing an exception
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z WARNING Unable to setData() for image e56eb86a-6214-d76f-648b-7edea622a4b4
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z WARNING Aborting set of formatted image
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z INFO Kakadu Error:
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z INFO Code-stream must start with an SOC marker!
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z WARNING KDU throwing an exception
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z WARNING Unable to setData() for image e56eb86a-6214-d76f-648b-7edea622a4b4
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z WARNING Aborting set of formatted image
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z INFO simulator_enable() Enabling 63.211.151.33:12035 with code 6925
2004-02-12T06:31:41Z E:\src\linden-1-2\linden\indra\newview\llsurface.cpp(701):ERROR Received invalid terrain packet - patch header patch ID incorrect!

It looks to me like your network connection is getting a bad data stream.

You may not notice this with most internet application, as the TCP system automatically corrects any network errors. Most online worlds don't use TCP, but instead use UDP because it has a lot less overhead. However, the downside is that UDP doesn't come with built-in error correction.

I'm surprised that SL's UDP implementation doesn't have a checksum to prevent kind of data corruption; or perhaps they do have corrections in place, but something else has gone wrong.

What you need to figure out is where the source of the data corruption is coming from. It could be in the hardware on your computer (memory, bus, network card, the network wire, NAT router, cable modem), the local network, your ISP's network, or something on LL's side.

I'd start out by trying things which would prove that it's something on your side, by doing a few checks...

Do you get a lot of lag or any reported packet loss?

Have you had similiar problems with any other full screen online games (most of them use UDP)?

Have you ever had any problems with streaming audio or video from live sources?

If your network works perfectly with UDP packets from other internet sources, then something really odd could be happening on LL's side.

Good luck...

I've usually never seen much by way of packet loss in the past, though the packet loss indicator in SL has blinked a very few times, I've never seen it do that when I was about to have a crash. Bleah. Hrm.

Okay, I've done some pretty basic troubleshooting on my end here and have narrowed it down a little, possibly. I turned on the debug display to look at my packet loss and bandwidth statistics, and thanks to the other thread about reducing the risk of those problems was able to adjust my configuration a little to hopefully speed things up a touch. However, some constant monitoring of the situation as I did a variety of common in-game things showed me that I really don't have any occurrences of packet loss or massive bandwidth spiking right up until the point where it all goes right to hell. At that point, my last (and so far only) in-game crash was accompanied by an off the scales amount of dropped packets. One instant it was fine, the next it was a flurry of bad packets and I was toast.

I set my network connection to 200Kbit, and wish I was able to seperate my sound download bandwidth from my graphical. I'll also set the sound (upload?) to 32Kbit/sec, but if that truly is an upload amount, I'll be adjusting that upwards as I don't supply any unique audio from my client. (As far as I know, anyhow)

I've still had problems at 200Kbit network speed, and would really, really like not to have to drop to 100Kbit if at all possible. The only point of failure on my LAN that I can think of would be my kinda cheapo wireless router in the other room. I went through that, and took the DMZ port selection offline to hopefully reduce the amount of load being put on its hardware. If it comes right down to it, I can build an entire linux machine with a lot more horsepower than the router in order to work as a gateway. Or even dust off the P100 with IPCop that I have stashed in a closet, but I'd really like to think this is something LL will be able to fix rather than to watch my electric bill jump. Most other people won't have the options I do when it comes to network operations at home.

Though part of me DOES kinda want to put together a network gateway system with the 15" touchscreen I have sitting on the floor.

** deleted **

On my budget, unfortunately, a "New" anything is out of the question. Got laid off last month, will be returning to work on the first, though. If I have more crashes after some tweaks I just made, I'll be putting together a linux firewall and will test that. I can't connect directly with comfort due to the fact I don't like exposing my machines to the cable connection. The router spots a lot of port scanning and intrusion attempts, and I just don't trust AV software and Microsoft patches these days.

Though, I -could- try it with my Mac. Hmm.