Inventory successfully backed up to hard disk

Is the title of this thread:

"Inventory successfully backed up to hard disk"

something people would like to see within SL in the reasonably near future?

If you want this feature, go vote for VWR-358 in Jira. Instructions on voting are below. You may also want to read the discussion on why this isn't easy -- however I'm sure some server-side method could be invented. If I were LL, I might be tempted to request payment for such a service.

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The JIRA login page is at https://jira.secondlife.com/cas/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Fjira.secondlife.com%2F secure%2FDashboard.jspa


-- If you know the bug number (like VWR-35, then enter it in the "Quick Search" field in the upper right of the JIRA screen.
-- When the bug description comes up, look on the panel on the left side of the screen for the section called "Operations" (probably the last section)
-- The last item in that section should be "Voting". A single click there will register your vote. The page will change to indicate that you now have voted for this bug.

ALL DONE!

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The next time you log into Jira, you will see a set of links on the entry page like this:

"My Unresolved Reported Issues | Votes "

Click on the "Votes" part of the link and you will see the status of all issues you have voted for.

Also, whenever you're looking at a bug description, in the far left panel you will see a line titled "Votes". This is the number of people who have voted for the issue, and if you click "View" there you can see their names. So you can IM your friends who haven't yet voted to do so

Thanks Nika - had not spotted that - and I do browse JIRA on and off....

There are so many problems with this one though. In the case of copyable items this is fine, but the issues don't really occur with copyable items, as you only rez copies so if they get lost it's no big deal really.

However, no-copy items are the real troublesome one, as if you 'back-up' to hard-disk, the game has to somehow check that you didn't actually manage to rez it, otherwise you'll be able to copy no-copy items. I think that to really be workable this would require all no-copy items to have an extra check, basically a transaction log somewhere saying "User X tried to rez object Y in sim Z", then if you try to restore the item, SL can query sim Z to find out if object Y ever rezzed (the sim would keep a sort of log for the past 24 hours or so mb).
This of course adds overhead, fortunately it wouldn't be THAT much since the only no-copy items being rezzed can only be rezzed once (unless they're taken into inventory again at which point the sim would take a note of this).

With this kind of system you could 'restore' an item as it would check the transaction log, if the sim has no note of the transaction then it failed, or was undone by a rollback/crash and can be restored.

All-in-all though pretty complex for a system that sounds simple in theory.

Unfortunately, this isn't quite the case. There are reports of things just vanishing from the inventory rather than being lost during a rez/derez. So backing up copy items is as important as backing up no-copy items.



If you look in the jira issue on backing up registry you will find the suggestion that when you rez an item a link to that item remains in the inventory (perhaps in a special folder). For backup purposes, this would enable the check you describe during a restore. It also has other purposes, such as finding misplaced items. One particular misplaced item it would be extremely useful to find are scam devices which get the victim to accept a debit permision and then zooms off to a random location in the sim.

Yes, this does imply some changes to the asset server architecture - however given the how much time, effort and money people put into the contents of their inventory, not having a backup facility of any kind seems a major lack of functionality even without the frequency of inventory loss. A backup facility which respects the permissions system is feasible, and some might argue the asset server architecture should have be designed to accomodate a backup facility from the beginning.

Matthew

I have heard there was a LL talk about possibility to implement inventory backup for those you have full copy/mod/trans perms. I think it's what most possible in /nearer/ future (relative to LL standard timeframe....that is)

My understanding is that you will never see this kind of thing because the REAL assets are stored on the server's side. YOu only get a cached copy on your computer so that the server doesn't have to download the entire inventory to you. The server has to verify the validity of all the items in your cache before it signals that they are valid.

If the server's identification database is messed up, you get problems. It might be ok to assume that your copyable/transferable items are yours, regardless, but it would be impossible for them to make that assumption about your no-transfer stuff.

You do not need be a programmer to realize the importance of an inventory. Its the sum total of what we own.

All our earnings either in-world or from cash purchases are converted into in-world goods and services. Land seems a bit safer since it appears deep rooted into the grid.

As in real life, our inventory belongs in a secure system such as banks have. The banks keep ongoing records and back ups of all our transactions. If they can do it (and if I recall, my bank balance along with dollar bills are no copy items) SL needs to figure out a way also.

Good luck.

Surely, what is needed is not a backup or download of your entire inventory to hard drive, it's simply a list of exactly what is in the inventory? So, for example, you could opt to check a Preference that says "backup inventory list on logout to your nominated drive". This would be a time-stamped list of your entire inventory contents.

Then, when you login, LL downloads your "login inventory list" - a complete list of your inventory's contents - into your inventory, time-stamped with your last logout and login.

It would then be possible, if you notice items missing from your inventory, to compare the 2 lists, and if items appear on the logout list but not on the login list, that could be challenged with LL, who would have the 2 lists on their databases. (The login list would be downloaded BEFORE a resident could click Accept / Decline on any items offered to them while they are offline, so those items would not show.)

This would function like the Transaction History attached to your account, where you can see where every single $ has gone.

This system would not work if items go missing after a crash, but nor would any other system you could come up with.

There isn't anything preventing someone from writing up a backup proggie for clothes, animations, textures and notecards, regardless of permissions.

Mod scripts can also be backed up, as well as any prim/attachment without embedded scripts.

If LL won't write an inventory backup tool (which in an ideal world would actually be redundant, they simply need to keep things from *poof*'ing and have a global backup in case of hardware failure), someone else will and it won't be too picky about what permissions you end up with.

(There probably already is one, since the OpenSim project includes an "exporter" to transfer inventory across grids)