Philip gives us some news on Login problems
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Jesse Brearly
Registered User
Join date: 20 Mar 2005
Posts: 234
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05-15-2005 10:13
From: Philip Linden Hi, Sorry for the load and login troubles. We are doing everything we can, and certainly going through some growth pains here. Nothing specific changed in 1.6 that is causing these problems - they are caused by SL's growth and specific types of in-world content that is being created. Here is an overview: Our database load is suddenly increasing and creating the observed login delays when there are both lots of people in SL and lots of people trying to log in. We don't know why the load is increasing so sharply, and we didn't predict failure at these load levels. While we are trying to figure out the specific cause of the problems, the next patch (1.6.5) has some changes that MAY provide some temporary help. The big change is an improvement in the efficiency of the way we check email for scripts. There are currently thousands of scripted objects in SL which are checking for email a total of several hundred times per second. This was something that we didn't anticipate - content creators in SL are way overloading the system with these email checks, so we need to redesign for a better approach. Hopefully this will drop overall database login load, because profiling suggests that this call is where the database spends most of it's time. Looking forward, there are two types of database load we are trying to rapidly fix. The first is inventory, and the second is in-world searches via the finder. Because we have put no limits of inventory, people have staggering amounts (terabytes) of stuff in inventory. The size of the data (again something we didn't anticipate in initial design) is going to force us to rapidly build a distributed system of many database clusters to store everyone's inventory. Right now, the queries that find things in inventory are putting severe load on the database. With respect to in-world (when you type something into the search bar in the find window), we are looking at ways to move this data to a secondary server so that the queries can be made against that server rather than the main database. We are working as quickly as we can to fix the problems - as you can see from above there isn't a silver bullet or a design error. We are just being stressed to the limit by some systems (scripted objects, inventory, and text searches) that are growing at a rate much more rapid than the growth of the SL user base. Obviously just asking everyone to delete stuff from inventory and not use objects that get email messages from outside SL isn't a sufficient solution - we need to quickly redesign to adapt to the conditions we are seeing. __________________ Philip Linden CEO & Founder, Linden Lab blog: http://secondlife.blogs.com/philip At least now we have some solid information. We are no longer just stumbling in the dark and I know I am more sympathatic to their situation... even if I am still upset over it  |
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Jonquille Noir
Lemon Fresh
Join date: 17 Jan 2004
Posts: 4,025
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05-15-2005 10:16
Sounds like it's time to halt new sign-ups until they can handle them.
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MrsJakal Suavage
Purple Butterfly
Join date: 18 Jul 2004
Posts: 1,434
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05-15-2005 10:19
Well, time to do my part...as soon as I get into SL, I'm going to clean out my inventory! I have so much junk in there I don't ever pull out or use. Especially all that freebie stuff, I collected when I was a n00b. |
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Jillian Callahan
Rotary-winged Neko Girl
Join date: 24 Jun 2004
Posts: 3,766
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05-15-2005 10:20
I do wish Phillip would stop mentioning my inventory.  |
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Merwan Marker
Booring...
Join date: 28 Jan 2004
Posts: 4,706
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05-15-2005 10:20
From: Jonquille Noir Sounds like it's time to halt new sign-ups until they can handle them. Yeah they've got to do something differently and soon. It's one thing when these failures happen in the first 6 months to year, but we now have grown to the place where many have arrived expecting a stable-platform. /_/_
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Darkness Anubis
Registered User
Join date: 14 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,628
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05-15-2005 10:24
I for one would like to thank Phillip for posting this information.
Many of us will continue to be frustrated with the situation but knowing what is really going on in some sort of detail does help.
What am I working on to help the situtation.
1. let the log in cancell itself rather than me stopping it mid stream
2. Reducing my inventory clutter. I happen to know I have alot of things in that are duplicates or I have never and will never use. Much of it from my early days in game and a freebie mania I had. If I haven't needed it in my almost 1 year in game I probably never will. Delete
3. Checking my objects for e-mail calls. if I have any returning them to a much smaller inventory till this crises is passed.
Am I advocating everyone do all this? Certainly not. For myself alone this is a reasonable way to try to be part of the solution rather than adding to the problem.
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Pendari Lorentz
Senior Member
Join date: 5 Sep 2003
Posts: 4,372
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05-15-2005 10:24
From: MrsJakal Suavage Well, time to do my part...as soon as I get into SL, I'm going to clean out my inventory! I have so much junk in there I don't ever pull out or use. Especially all that freebie stuff, I collected when I was a n00b. I'm with you MrsJakal! My inventory is a nightmare. And while Philip stated that asking us to delete stuff is not a real solution (which I agree with), I'll still feel better cleaning up my inventory because I'm sure there are other people out there that need most or all of *their* inventory, and here I am just hogging up resources.  Someone should throw a "clean out your inventory and lets burn it" party! 
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Jesse Brearly
Registered User
Join date: 20 Mar 2005
Posts: 234
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05-15-2005 10:25
From: Merwan Marker Yeah they've got to do something differently and soon.
It's one thing when these failures happen in the first 6 months to year, but we now have grown to the place where many have arrived expecting a stable-platform.
/_/_ This is a turning point for them. On one hand they want more subscribers, but on the other they desperately need to make sure they can expotentially handle those new subscribers and their inscrease on the db. If they do not grow both in users and resources to handle the users at the samerate then SL will get a bad rep for being down, unstable, laggy, and not much fun. While we know this to be untrue except for the last few days, those coming to it new will not, those that review it will not. |
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Jesse Brearly
Registered User
Join date: 20 Mar 2005
Posts: 234
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05-15-2005 10:29
From: Pendari Lorentz I'm with you MrsJakal! My inventory is a nightmare. And while Philip stated that asking us to delete stuff is not a real solution (which I agree with), I'll still feel better cleaning up my inventory because I'm sure there are other people out there that need most or all of *their* inventory, and here I am just hogging up resources. Someone should throw a "clean out your inventory and lets burn it" party! LOL this made me laugh. The reason is I played this game called UO, it was a fun game. I am unable to recall exactly when this happened but sometime during it first few years of life the db's were getting full and so the developers sponsored a "Clean up Britiania" celebration where you would put anything and everything you did not want/like into a grabage barrel and it would be deleted permantely. For this though you got points to save up and once it was all over you took those points and exchanged them for cool items. Items would be like Deeds of Blessing (no decay/no destroy). |
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Cienna Samiam
Bah.
Join date: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 1,316
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05-15-2005 10:30
We should have a huge yard sale to redistribute the inventories of the metaverse.
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Cocoanut Koala
Coco's Cottages
Join date: 7 Feb 2005
Posts: 7,903
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05-15-2005 10:42
I like that UO idea.
I also like the "clean up the inventory" plan.
What is an item that calls for e-mail or whatever that thing was he mentioned? Could someone explain that to me? (With concrete examples?)
coco
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Tymber Donovan
Registered User
Join date: 27 May 2004
Posts: 130
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05-15-2005 10:44
I am with all of you who want to help out our community and clean out our inventories. I agree with having events to clean out the inventories, or lindens to hold a in world "garbage" as ya'll have posted already. Great ideas! As soon as i get into sl, im doin some summer cleaning! yay!
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Lordfly Digeridoo
Prim Orchestrator
Join date: 21 Jul 2003
Posts: 3,628
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05-15-2005 10:51
From: Cocoanut Koala
What is an item that calls for e-mail or whatever that thing was he mentioned? Could someone explain that to me? (With concrete examples?)
coco
Almost anything that interfaces with the outside world in SL uses the LSL scripting email functions... the GOM ATMs are a great example. The reason there's a small delay in getting any information to the ATM isn't a coding issue, it's LSL's issue... the ATM has to send an email off to the GOM website, the website gets the mail, sends the mail back, to the ATM, which checks its own mailbox, which then displays it to you. Now, imagine 10,000 objects doing this, and you get an idea of the issue at hand. Some people are very efficient at coding, so they aren't the problem... the issue is someone kludging together a script that fires off a hojillion emails every minute for every small piece of information, and then selling that script/giving it away. Suddenly, one person's inability to code is loose on the grid, clogging the infrastructure. Bad News. LF
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Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
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05-15-2005 10:53
From: Cienna Samiam We should have a huge yard sale to redistribute the inventories of the metaverse. aka "The Great Inventory Shuffle of '05"One prob is, I'd like to save a lot more of my snapshots, but quite a few of them given to me by fellow Residents are (no copy) (no modify) which puts a crimp in things. I guess I could take a Print Screen but that'd be kind of longwinded. But there are a lot. Ah well. |
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StoneSelf Karuna
His Grace
Join date: 13 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,955
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05-15-2005 10:53
From: Jesse Brearly At least now we have some solid information. We are no longer just stumbling in the dark and I know I am more sympathatic to their situation... even if I am still upset over it ditto
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Water Rogers
Registered User
Join date: 1 May 2003
Posts: 286
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05-15-2005 10:54
Perfect, i'm in to delete useless stuff from my eversomassive-2-year old inventory.... i have around 116,000 items in it that should help. Thinking of taking snapshots that i have mod/copy perms i'll save em to disk. Probably well worth the time in the long run. --Water
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From: Philip Linden
For the more technically minded - the problem is actually NOT the asset server (or 'asshat' as you prefer to affectionately call it herein).
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Beryl Greenacre
Big Scaredy-Baby
Join date: 24 Jun 2003
Posts: 1,312
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05-15-2005 10:54
I remember that Candie Apple used to hold an event that involved cleaning out your inventory and some sort of a prize for the people who eliminated the most stuff; I can't remember, however, exactly how it worked. It's dangerous for me to have free time in RL on the weekends when I can't login to SL. I start looking at the houses for sale ads in the Sunday paper and dragging my husband to Home Depot to buy stuff for projects ("Honey, let's paint the living room lime green!" "Groan."  .
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Cadroe Murphy
Assistant to Mr. Shatner
Join date: 31 Jul 2003
Posts: 689
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05-15-2005 10:55
I've wondered if they couldn't somehow seperate inventory into an active section and a long-term storage section. Like the difference between my closet and my garage. I think most of the data in my inventory is old stuff I don't need quick access to but which I don't want to have to throw away permanently. I'm not a database expert, but perhaps it would ease the load if I could tag that old stuff for "storage" and it wouldn't be included in normal searches and inventory download? Just an idea.
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Water Rogers
Registered User
Join date: 1 May 2003
Posts: 286
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05-15-2005 10:56
From: Cadroe Murphy I've wondered if they couldn't somehow seperate inventory into an active section and a long-term storage section. Like the difference between my closet and my garage. I think most of the data in my inventory is old stuff I don't need quick access to but which I don't want to have to throw away permanently. I'm not a database expert, but perhaps it would ease the load if I could tag that old stuff for "storage" and it wouldn't be included in normal searches and inventory download? Just an idea. Excellent suggestion!
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From: Philip Linden
For the more technically minded - the problem is actually NOT the asset server (or 'asshat' as you prefer to affectionately call it herein).
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StoneSelf Karuna
His Grace
Join date: 13 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,955
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05-15-2005 10:58
From: Cadroe Murphy I've wondered if they couldn't somehow seperate inventory into an active section and a long-term storage section. Like the difference between my closet and my garage. I think most of the data in my inventory is old stuff I don't need quick access to but which I don't want to have to throw away permanently. I'm not a database expert, but perhaps it would ease the load if I could tag that old stuff for "storage" and it wouldn't be included in normal searches and inventory download? Just an idea. somehow, i think the solution is a quota system on inventory... (ew!) rule of thumb about datastorage and users is that "usage goes capacity."
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Sky Calliope
The Scatterbrain
Join date: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 46
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05-15-2005 11:03
Ty for sharing this with us, am glad to least know what is causing the problems lately...knowing lets know if worth staying or not...it will probably take time ....been deleting items from my inventory -between crashes that is lol- since last night...when im able to get in lol...got a lot gone but still have way too much left to clean out...
Do what they do when cleaning out clothes and etc in RL....if you dont use/need/want the item toss/delete it out, if you havent used the item in a year or months then toss/delete it out....if you have more than one thing of that item then toss/delete it out-who really gotta have 5 belted diamond pumps?LOL or 34 items named "object" LOL....omg in my inventory i have found over 10 Alpine Cabins LOL when can get in to delete them to 1 or none will do that LOL
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Ardith Mifflin
Mecha Fiend
Join date: 5 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,416
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05-15-2005 11:04
From: Sky Calliope Ty for sharing this with us, am glad to least know what is causing the problems lately...knowing lets know if worth staying or not...it will probably take time ....been deleting items from my inventory -between crashes that is lol- since last night...when im able to get in lol...got a lot gone but still have way too much left to clean out...
Do what they do when cleaning out clothes and etc in RL....if you dont use/need/want the item toss/delete it out, if you havent used the item in a year or months then toss/delete it out....if you have more than one thing of that item then toss/delete it out-who really gotta have 5 belted diamond pumps?LOL or 34 items named "object" LOL....omg in my inventory i have found over 10 Alpine Cabins LOL when can get in to delete them to 1 or none will do that LOL When those 34 "objects" are each 34 different works in progress, I'm hesitant to delete them. |
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Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
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05-15-2005 11:06
From: Cadroe Murphy I've wondered if they couldn't somehow seperate inventory into an active section and a long-term storage section. Like the difference between my closet and my garage. I think most of the data in my inventory is old stuff I don't need quick access to but which I don't want to have to throw away permanently. I'm not a database expert, but perhaps it would ease the load if I could tag that old stuff for "storage" and it wouldn't be included in normal searches and inventory download? Just an idea. |
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Khamon Fate
fategardens.net
Join date: 21 Nov 2003
Posts: 4,177
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05-15-2005 11:11
We should've realized a year ago that ever expanding inventories would eventually bring the world to it's knees. Gee we might've even thought to recommend that people start cleaning out and keeping trim their inventories at that point so they could laugh and wahoo and ridicule us mercilessly. No better yet, we might've suggested to LL that they impose an inventory limit on us so those fourteen residents could really scream insults and threaten to quit playing altogether.
Why am I not laughing now? I'm not supposed to care what happens. I must type "But Patsy, you have no morals" a thousand more times.
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Nikki Seraph
Registered User
Join date: 6 Jan 2005
Posts: 238
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05-15-2005 11:17
"Storage" would be an awesome idea!
I sort of - well, insofar as it is possible - do this now, actually. Any objects that I don't use often are placed in a prim labled "Storage" (lol) and kept there until such time as I need them. Of course, this doesn't cut down on the actual SIZE of inventory stored on the asset servers ... but it does cut down on my search times, and makes my inventory stream a little faster since it keeps the individually "out" items at their bare minimum for me.
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