Server Release Beta : Version 1.25.0

This thread is to discuss beta testing of version 1.25.0.

Discussion will also occur in the "Second Life Beta" group in-world, on both agni and aditi (the Preview grid-- see http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/PreviewGrid), and in the server release beta office hours which are at Morris (192, 251, 35) **on aditi, the Preview grid**.

If you cannot log into aditi because you're account was created less than three weeks ago, by early next week we will have refreshed aditi's database (assuming all goes well) so that you will be able to log in.

Note that the *best* way to report specific bugs or problems is to either file an issue with in the JIRA (http://jira.secondlife.com), or comment on an issue in the JIRA if it has already been reported.

Update : here is the blog post announcing that 1.25.0 is available on aditi : http://status.secondlifegrid.net/2008/10/24/post296/

By the way -- if you file a new JIRA issue about problems with the *server* that you see in the Second Life Beta Server channel on aditi, please create a SVC issue, and please tag the issue to belong to server version 1.25.

VWR-4195 : Eject and Ban still available with Ban Access disabled in roles


one of these days you guys will have to mesh acess and ban list together in the group roles since you did that how long ago and they still show seperate! hehe

yeay for my bug being fixed tho!

I'd love to get involved, however...



...my account was created at the end of May and even though I try roughly once a week I am yet to manage to log in! What you are saying here though (the three week business) makes me now wonder if the issue is with me, but I'm unsure who best to ask about this as it's not the sort of thing that appears to come under the normal, production, ticket system

I've tried this with the last test viewer and with the current ones (and RC) with the CTRL+G trick to select the preview grid.

Any advice anyone?

Thanks

Vicky -- it may well be that it was May when we last refreshed the aditi database; honestly, I don't exactly remember. However, if after we get the refresh done (HOPEFULLY Tuesday), you still can't log in, post again here.

Why not replacing the beta grid with beta, Linden-ran sandboxes on the main grid ?

The beta grid is unpractical to test new server software because:

1.- Very few people can afford spending time on the beta grid when all the business and fun happen on the main grid. This is made even more problematic for people with "old" computers (i.e. with single core CPU) for whom it is pretty much impossible to run two viewer instances (one on the beta, the other on the main grid) reliably (expect a crash of one or both of the viewers within the hour, at best).

2.- Some bugs take hours to appear (I could cite the nasty Mono bugs, like this one https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2981 ) and because of 1 above, they will never be encountered on the beta grid.

3.- The inventory is separate on the beta, meaning that:
- it is most of the time out of sync by weeks or even months (worst case)
- What you build on beta can't be exported back to the main grid (meaning that residents can't even use the beta grid as a sandbox to build their projects for the main grid, which would be a good mean of spending time on the beta grid while not loosing time in SL as a whole).

With the solution of beta sandbox, residents could come in and test beta servers while building or scripting things for their business on the main grid, they could keep staying in touch with their friends and business while doing so, and there would be no inventory problems... Hell, they could even come RP in some sandbox (or some early adopter regions, something that missed cruelly to Mono) and have fun there, all the while testing the beta software...

Henri's suggestion sounds really good when used in addition to the beta grid. It should be fairly easy to implement a new server version onto a handful of main grid sandbox sims at the same time it's ready for the beta grid. Any thoughts on that, Prospero?

One reason to keep it separate is that money doesn't really matter on the beta grid so it's good for testing things like vendors. Or anything that you might not want to lose your only copy of.

Still, having a set of sims on the main grid that run the beta code would probably crank up the number of people that test it..

By and large, we avoid putting the code on the main grid at all until it's been through extensive QA. Then, we *do* do pilot rolls. Our plan, moving forward, with "major" releases (i.e. the one where the second digit, not the third digit, is what's changing) is to have at least several days between a pilot roll and the full rolling restart.

One thing to bear in mind about the betas that we're talking about here is that these are release betas. This is different from things like the Havok4 beta program, which had some regions on the grid for months. There, we had a specific beta program to test a specific new (major) upcoming change or feature. The release beta program is the final testing of the complete new server that's planned for the whole grid. By the time we get to putting the release beta on aditi, we don't want to wait a long time before it goes out to the whole grid; to do so would slow down and ossify our overall development process, delaying our ability to get other changes and fixes out.

As such, there's not a lot of time for a "tiny pilot" roll similar to what you're talking about-- that is, putting it on a few mainland regions. Except in special circumstances, we don't want to put it on the main grid at all until it's been vetted on the Preview Grid, and once that happens, we can't afford to wait weeks and weeks before putting out the full release. I don't doubt that we'll tinker with the process more in the future, and we'll take this good idea into account, but for now we're going with the beta (for a week) followed by pilot roll (for a few days to a week), followed by a full roll.

Also, this should probably be on the "general discussion" thread rather than the 1.25.0 thread....

I hope some of you have made it into aditi to take a look at 1.25.0, and I hope to see some of you at office hours tomorrow at 2!

Pilot rolls are good to detect possible catastrophic bugs (including bugs or slow downs appearing only on heavy load) that would ruin the main grid should the new version be pushed up on all the sims, but they are not good at detecting more subtle bugs... I could cite the llGetNextEmail() bug which was detected *after* the full rolling restart of the first Mono server.

Should the Mono servers had been available during the whole beta-test phase on sandboxes on the main grid, I'm pretty sure this bug would have been detected even before you'd have considered a pilot roll.


Why wasn't it done for Mono, then, like it was with Havok4 ?... Now, we have to live with unreliable (and thus commercially unusable) Mono... Not to mention the bugs that it introduced in LSL (among which a nasty one I'm trying to investigate right now: it happens very rarely, but when it does (probably at deserialization step, i.e. on rezzing), all the scripted secondary prims of an object become "deaf" to link_messages).

Why the Hell would it delay anything ?... Simply keep the beta grid. Then you will have the betas available on some sandboxes on the main grid as well as on the beta grid: it simply would give people who, like me, can't afford spending fruitless time on the beta grid, the actual opportunity to test the betas.

But then the "vetting" is only the result of a handful of residents, while they could be legions with beta sandboxes on the main grid...

Adopting my proposal in addition to what already exists won't have to change the least this planning.

I just followed the link in the blog...

Sorry, not me. No time for this.

Rolling out a few sandboxes in Agni would result in no more and probably less people testing there then they do already in Aditi. Stating that a person would have more time to test in special locations in MG as opposed to testing in Aditi is a non argument and more then slightly ludicrous. When Havok 4 was sandboxed in Agni, did anyone here complaining actually show up and test? The times when I was there in different locations there were far fewer people then I normally saw in Aditi Havok 4 sims. This is coming from a person who has spent most of her time in Aditi as opposed to MG over the last 3 years.

There is, and has always been, only a miniscule percentage of people who are interested in taking time out of thier "fun" to test, no matter what location.

Sorry if this is off topic to 1.25.0 Prospero, but it does address server testing in general. Testing as it stands now starts with Alpha testing which is done in Siva for example by QA, in many cases, Alpha won't even run without crashing within a minute or so. Beta testing is done in Aditi and in a few cases in the last couple of years, still wouldn't run without crashing after a few minutes and a bunch of Critical bugs being found the first couple of days which needed to be fixed for it to be stable enough for additional testing(MONO rollout comes to mind). A couple of weeks later quite a few Major bugs will have been reported with either good repro, or QA has done the repro and a new Beta is released. Over time, more bugs are reported by a handful of people and more problems are corrected until it is though it is stable enough to release to Agni.

The first problem has always been that even if there were 200 people bug hunting, this pales in comparison to 50 or 60K people throwing their scripts at server code. The second problem is money, it takes considerable time to take a current snapshot of users and their inventory and putting this on the Aditi grid, even more time if land purchasing is going to be tested. And there are a limited number of QA resources at LL. Adding even 3 or 4 more at $50+K per year still pales in comparison to having 60,000 people throwing their buggy scripts at the simulator.

To add a 3rd layer ie; Charlie testing in sandboxes on the MG, you might gain a handful more people testing then there are now, $50,000+ more to be spent on 1 more Linden just to manage the sandboxes. That is an extremely small return on a not inconsiderate payroll layout and again still pales in comparison to 60,000 people throwing their scripts and different operating systems and hardware at the simulator. Can anyone here really think they would be able to justify such an expense at their RL company under these circumstances, especially in this economy?

Just so everybody knows -- I've hit another hitch in trying to refresh the aditi database, so it's unlikely we'll have it refreshed by tomorrow. I apologize for this, and will keep banging away at it.

Hey Prospero, thanks to you and everyone else involved for getting the collision issue fixed, been looking forward to it for a while. I was wondering if my region could be added to the list for the pilot rollout? It's a HUD based combat region and a good place for such testing.

Thanks again

Kayla (and anybody else) -- if you want your region added to the pilot roll, please email me with the region name at prospero at lindenlab dot com.

Thanks!

i like to join it beta im estate owner how do i get involve let me know ok please i like to help second life

nennette -- to get involved in beta testing, at some level you just need to jump into the preview grid and try things out. Vektor and I hold office hours twice a week on the preview grid to discuss beta testing, and where you can ask us questions about it.

If you want your estate included in the pilot roll, please email me at prospero at lindenlab dot com.

Hey all -- I posted this in the announcements thread, but I'll mention it here too. I expect, for real this time, to be able to refresh the aditi database. Sometime tomorrow, I'll take down aditi for a short while in order to do the database refresh. After that people who have accounts on Second Life as of a couple of days ago will be able to log into the Preview Grid. Also, your inventory on aditi will be replaced with your current main-grid Second Life inventory as of the time when you first log into Aditi after the database refresh.

Keep up the good work, Prospero. If there's anyone left by the time 1.25 hits the main grid, I'm sure it'll be appreciated.