"empty cache at log off" tickbox

So many small viewer updates, so often, and so much forum bandwidth used to tell people over and over to flush out the cache: lately I have found I even had to chkdsk the volume with my cache on it to get the program running better. I'm seriously considering a bit of "poor man's ReadyBoost" by putting the SL cache on a U3 pendrive on some of my machines...

So, pretty please, can we have a tiny chunk of code that nukes the cache at the end of every session? If it takes an appreciable amount of time to do so then the user has a machine problem up the wah-zoo, so it can't be a bad idea all round, and at least the support teams will know they don't have a cache problem in future.

Excellent suggestion. I clear the cache manually at each logoff/crash, but this would be a welcme addition.

Sure makes sense

And while were at it they should make the Uninstall delete the Folder that contains the Cache like it used to.

I clear my cache maybe once every few weeks. If you were having problems and you think that clearing it every single time helps then ok, that's fine. If not, you might want to reconsider clearing it so often. It adds load to the server and makes things slower to rez for you.

I'll try it both ways and see what works best. Thank You.

You can make SL clear the cache at startup by modifying the shortcut that you use to start SL with.

You do this by adding the -purge switch to the target field of the SL shortcut.

In a default installation of SL on a windows computer, the shortcut's target field looks like this:
"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe"

To make SL clear the cache at startup you add "-purge" following that, so the shortcut would look like:

"C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" -purge

the -purge goes outside the quotation marks that enclose C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe .

There's a list of these client parameters at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Client_parameters .

Thanks Susanne; I did try looking for this first honest guv, but the link in the knowledge base pages 404'd me...

I only ever have a problem with cached files when I get an update, I don't see why clearing all the time would help. If it's causing some kind of problem then the issue isn't that it isn't being cleared all the time, but that it is causing some kind of problem in the first place!

LL have been doing some small work on the cache, and I believe a lot of the open-source people are interested in it, as it is an area that really deserves some large amounts of attention as it's kind of an important feature.

From what I hear, LL frequently suggests a cache clear as one of the first steps when a problem happens. I think many people have taken this to mean that a clean cache is a happy cache and it's safest to just clear it all the time. I can see why people might think this and it's probably not a horrible idea to clear it often. OTOH, I think there are arguments that say frequent cache clears cause problems.

I think my rule is to clear on viewer updates and to clear after a crash. Anything more than that is probably overkill.