Mac client caching issues

Hello! Since the latest update to Second Life, it's become very difficult for me to do anything.

I have a MacBook Pro 17", 2.17GHz Core Duo, 256MB Radeon Mobility x1600. Due to being a laptop, this has a rather slow hard drive, but that can't really be helped.

If I play SL for any period of time (1-3 hours) and stay in the same space, it gets progressively slower to turn around, as items are loaded from the cache. If I move from place to place, this accellerates the process. when I'm standing still, and looking in one direction, my framerate is fine, but the instant I try to move, everything grinds to a halt for 1-15 seconds as SL fetches data from the cache, and recreates the world, making it impossible to move/turn/do anything. I'll get a 1-15 second cranking, then a skip in my field of view, then another cranking as it loads more from the cache.

It seems like you've got a major caching flaw in the latest version of the mac client, clearing my cache and relogging restores normalcy. This only happens in a fairly heavily prim-populated sim.

Anyway, I'm wondering if there is a way to turn caching off entirely, except for inventory, or if you can provide a fix for this really rather annoying issue in the next revision. My hard drive and I will both thank you.

Cheers!

CCC

Hello Clinton,

I've not experienced this yet on my Mac; I don't know a way to turn it off aside from changing it to the lowest setting, 50 MB, in Preferences > Network tab.

If this is indeed a bug, first and foremost, it should be fixed.

I'm going to move this to the Mac Technical Issues forum... anyone else having this problem, please supply details.

Sounds like the repro is reliable enough, so as long as you're sure it's not just you, Help menu > Report Bug with the details is what you should do after you've verified this!

Torley is the expert here, but here's something I've seen before (though NOT with SL):

How full is your hard drive, Clinton? And when you start to slow down in SL, can you hear your hard drive making a 'clicking' noise? It could be your Hard Drive thrashing?

There are some system maintenance utilities that run automatically in the wee small hours of the morning. If you shut down your Mac at night, these never get run.
Try downloading a program such as ONYX (free, you can find it at VersionTracker.Com).

Use Onyx to manually delete all the old log files and manually start the maintenance routines.
That may free up some disk space and clean up some stuff, including defrag of some huge files.

I have the same symptoms as Clinton and no my Hard drive is nice and empty. When i turn i freeze for days. I have used the control /option/2 to bring up the data stats bars and I have noticed that the freezes corrolate with sudden spikes in loading data. I have no idea wot this means... but i do freeze when i turn.

So all week I've been on a borrowed PC. (grrrr...) (including the night i posted above.)
Last night, I'm back on mr.Mac (YAY). and i'm at a club...
Same club for a couple of hours.
And I noticed the textures on the walls stopped changing.
A few minutes later, and movement became REE-AA-Ly slo-o-o-w.
I'd call it 'molasses', but molasses will flow out of a bottle if you wait long enough.
I logged out, and immediately back in.

The textures were moving, the peeps were dancing, and I was much much much faster.

This was with the current viewer. (I'd used the Beta viewer earlier in the day).

BUT, it DOES sound like there's something wrong with the mac version.
And "YES", I did all the things to myself that I suggested for Clinton!

OBTW: There's a new version of APPLEJACK out. Its now Intel compatible. Just FYI.

Just out of curiousity, I went to:
~/Library/Application Support/SecondLife/Cache
and did a 'Get Info' on the Cache Folder.
The SIZE reported is 2.99 Gigs! !!!
As in, 3 times the maximum that can be set with the slider.

Needless to say, 'Clear Cache' will become part of my startup sequence.

So, LL, how about just making the whole cache temporary for each session? That way we dont' have to keep emptying it?

My symptoms are much the same lately, I can hear the cache really thrashing the hard drives at times as I try and move, turn around etc. Yes it seems to be cumulative and builds up over time. No partition is more than about half full, I'm on a dual 2.5GHz G5 with ATI X800XT graphics, with two disk drives fitted.

Biggest bugbear is the inventory which seems to have a heck of a time fetching, wearing, changing items of late. Oh and the sit/unsit bug which often when you jump on or off a poseball, it sticks you in limbo at sim co-ords 0,0,0 for an indeterminate length of time - whereas everyone else sees you in the proper place - hence its evidently a local issue. I don't know if these others have any bearing on the cache though.

I've always had to periodically clean out my cache - 6 gigs cleaned out last night, hadn't done it in a couple days. Seems like there is no maximum cache setting that is effective for mac.

I just switched from my old PowerMac G4 to an intel based Imac with the same video memory size (256meg), and noticed the above symptoms right off the bat. After a while it gets painful to move or turn. This is on a brand new 2.16mhz imac. So, the bug may be specific to the Universal/Intel build of the Mac client since i never noticed this on my non-intel mac.

I hope it gets fixed 'cause I LOVE how fast it is now!!

I think the caching on SL on the whole is woefully inefficient, but on Macs your cache can exceed the limit you set for, I forget who pointed out but I checked and mine was a good 6gb when I have it set to 1gb, and I have the same problem you lot do even though I'm running a desktop. Adding in a second hard-drive under "stripe" mode (essentially twice as fast when two drives are combined like this) actually made a noticeable improvement, but it's still not perfect

Its true that the file architecture is different on the Intel iMacs. (not the way the data is STORED, but the SYSTEM calls are Changed.) This has required some program fixes for a lot of software. { (I'm a big fan of AppleJack--the free disk maintenance and repair tool. It FINALLY JUST came out for the Intel machines a couple of weeks ago. DiskWarrior, my second repair choice, still only runs on pre-Intel Macs.) }

STRIPING can give you a definite speed boost-particularly older machines.

BLAZE-C: you might just try turning the video down from 256 to 64...I forget which card it is-and you didn't say which iMac you have- but I seem to recall that there's a driver issue with some machines. If it doesn't help, you can always put it back.

DEE: If you can hear your hard drive clicking away, then see my post #3 above... When it actually makes noise, its being very inefficient=slow.

The slow down is due to a memory leak caused by the Mac client. Over time this sloppy programming causes your Ram to be eaten up. Rebooting or logging out of your mac and logging back in will cure this, but the programming should be cleaned up to fix this.

Run console on your mac and look for the following lines:

2006-11-25 10:33:20.491 Second Life[637] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x1882f460 of class NSMutableParagraphStyle autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
2006-11-25 10:33:20.492 Second Life[637] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x1882f7e0 of class NSCFDictionary autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
2006-11-25 10:33:20.496 Second Life[637] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x18831470 of class NSView autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
2006-11-25 10:33:20.513 Second Life[637] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x18831470 of class NSView autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
2006-11-25 10:33:20.513 Second Life[637] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x18831470 of class NSView autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking

This is caused if you just run the program and not log in. This is why SL slows down over time.

Mm. This is not something I've noticed on my iMac (2.16 Core 2 Duo, 1 gig RAM) - though I rarely stay logged in for more than an hour or two continuously. I've been having performance issues in general, grid-related I think, but not this.

Sterling, thank you!!! I switched SL preferences to use 128 meg of my memory card and it seemed to help and at 64meg all problems went away. However, not much would rez, so i went back to 128 and for some reason it seems still fixed there.

So, a big thanks to you figuring it was my video card driver. I hope they fix that since I upgraded the video card just for SL.!!

Edred is right about the memory leak at startup...must be the new browser code. it happens before you hit the Connect button. and after playing for a few mintues, there are no additional errors.

Blaze C: Glad to help! And 'Yes', I hear your frustration. I've been holding off on a new Mac while I sort through the video card mess. (and its not just Macs, PC users have issues, too)