Performance suddenly crawling on 1.18.3.5 and later

Installed 1.18.3.5 when it came up as mandatory. It didn't start the first couple of times, crashed and i had to kill some processes to recover. I removed the whole directory and also ~/.secondlife and reinstalled. Since then, performance is unbearable. A single keyboard or mouse click takes 15 seconds to reflect on the screen. I see dialog of people around me, and my avatar fidgets normally, but the world keeps slowly trying to rez and I can't get my avatar to walk across a room or even turn to one side with this performance unless I'm willing to wait for 90 consecutive 15-second pauses for each cursor key stroke to turn it 1 degree.

I'm running Red Hat Enterprise Linux R4 on a 1.8GZ Thinkpad R51 with 1.5GB of memory and builtin ATI Radeon graphics. My log is full of messages saying "packet_out_of_order", always expecting a packet number lower than it got. Client window shows about 10% dropped packets.

Windows client works fine on this machine and others. I don't have another Linux machine to try this client on.

I've used several previous Linux clients without problems on this system and I didn't change anything.

Anyone else have this problem, or anyone have suggestions I can try. I really don't want to run Windows just for this game.

more or less the same here, running suse 10.2 on an intel core duo with 2g ram and geforce 7500. sometimes its not as bad, sometimes its worse.

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Thanks for the comments, but you guys don't sound like you're seeing the same thing as I am at all. Slowdown from increased user population would not suddenly overwhelm my Linux client right at the time I upgrade. The Linux client, previously roughly equivalent to Windoze performance, suddenly caving to virtual paralysis while the Win client shows no ill effects is not the creeping result of a swelling user base. And, it's not sometimes better, sometimes not as bad. It's debilitating. I can't ever get fully logged in. I can't walk or move because of constant 15 second lag.

Something broke. Did anyone else see this same effect? Does anyone know the cause of dropped packets? I'm on a 3MB cable modem and it's very fast.

Hi, same here, running SL on an Asus S6J with 1 Go RAM and integrated Intel video card 945GM. My linux flavour is Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (updated from Feisty Fawn).

The old releases were working ok for me, that is, quite slow in animation (due to my 945GM graphic card I guess) but I could at least navigate in-world and interacte with people.

Since 3.18.3.5, it keeps crashing after few seconds in-world. I mean, a real nasty crash: the screen is frozen with my SL situation on screen, and nothing else works, including keyboard commands. I have no other choice than forcing the computer to shutdown (long pression on the power button). So I can't even try to get the output in the Gnome Terminal...

I hope it will be fixed soon!

Regards

Raph

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View http://tenkwear.110mb.com/sldebugg.txt , you can see there how he logs the errors into a *.txt-file. It is by Ilobmirt Tenk.

I r bit puzzled.
The OP's problem sounds like they might be running with software openGL rather than drivers for the card running.
I've been running the various flavours of clients the good Linden's see fit to send out to us beta testing minions and have yet to experience anything as grim as you describe.
Well that is if you ignore the occasional 30 second freeze, but they only happen once an hour or so, usually during a critical heartfelt conversation.
Surely you could Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to kill the window manager or Ctrl+Alt+Fsomething to drop to a text console and kill the client humanely?
Even in these days of journalling file systems I hate to hit the power button. That's the kind of thing Winsomething OS users have to do.

Oh. Edit. Maybe you should check your network install is roughly up to date? Upgrade / re-install bind, iptables, & netbase? You might be suffering some kind of problem because of the c-ares libraries in the more recent releases. http://daniel.haxx.se/projects/c-ares/ for info.

HI all,

I tested an older version of the SL client, the 18_2_1, and it works flawlessly on my Ubuntu computer. It just each version, starting from 1.18.3.5, that keeps crashing my whole computer after few seconds.

Even the Ctrl+Alt+Del command don't work, everything is just freezed. Sometimes, after few seconds, a black screen appears and obviously the Gnome interface tries to re-launch (I can see the little "time-running" icon in the middle of the screen). But even after few minutes waiting, nothing else happens.

For now I use the 18.2.1, waiting for new releases to fix this nasty bug.

Regards

Raph

Same result on the 18.4.3 viewer. Too slow to use.

Looking at the logs, I do see that the view has switched from using my card's driver to using the Open GL for video. The old viewer still uses my Radeon card driver, but of course it won't connect to the servers.

So, the viewer is broken for my system since 18.3.5. Too bad. I enjoyed the game but I won't be playing much until it's fixed. I don't have that many reasons to boot windows.

Please try the following and report back on what helps, if anything!

Edit ./secondlife and replace this line:
export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH="${LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH}":/usr/lib64/dri:/usr/lib32/dri:/usr/lib/dri
with either this line:
export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH="${LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH}":/usr/lib32/dri:/usr/lib64/dri:/usr/lib/dri
or this line:
export LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib64/dri:/usr/lib32/dri:/usr/lib/dri:"${LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH}"
(try the other if one fails). If all else fails, try removing that line altogether.

Thanks.

Hi, thanks for the help.

I tried both modfications in my file:
/usr/local/games/secondlife/SecondLife_i686_1_18_4_3/secondlife

First modif (32 instead of 64) resulted in crashes. Frist try: just after the login succeeded, SL crashed, but my Linux system was still running well. Second try: SL and the whole system froze after the login, I had to force a reboot, pressing the power button.

Second modif : just tried it once, SL and the whole system froze just after the login succeeded, i just had time to hear the ambiant sounds and the "tildling" sound (so I guess some friend tried to IM me while I was connecting).

FYI, I'm running Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon on an Asus S6J :
- graphic card Intel i945GM with 64 Gb allocated memory
- Ram 1 Gb
- Gnome 1.3.0
- kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
- Xorg 1.3.0
- GCC 4.1.3 (i486-linux-gnu)

The crash appears either with Compiz enabled or just running Metacity.

I hope this helps!

Regards

Raph

Uh? So you are saying he should switch to Windows, when it is infact the second life client that is broken? It obviously broke when upgrading to a newer client, which suggest that the fault lies in the client and not linux.

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First of all .. the new 1.18.5.2 RC is the stablest version of SL I experienced since I started logging on again since october. It's the only version that allows me to be in-world 24/7 without a crash. So it is evident to me that there can be an SL-client that works just fine. Appearantly Lindenlabs took the issues for example the linux-users had more serious than before. And that is in favour of all Secondlife-users.

Not sure about Linden Labs setup, But from a Network engineers standpoint it seems everybody logs into SL via Linden labs in Ca. I would think being the growth of this venture they would think about building server farms in areas around the US and europe with residents assigned to login to the nearest server farm. Then only have communications occurring between the server farms. Could have the network fully meshed for redundency. This would greatly increase the speed and reduce any lag time seen. Would like to know if their are any view points on this.

Thanks
Steady

Hi Tofu, thanks for following up on this. I tried both statements you gave and I see no difference from the original: still torturously slow, about 15 secs to respond to an arrow key press.

From looking at logs from running with different versions, I see that previous versions (18.1.2 and before) of the viewer HAD been using the Radeon driver I had to download from ATI to first get SL to work. However, the newer versions giving me this problem (18.3.5 and later) seem to be going for the GL drivers in a way the older ones didn't.

I'm on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux - AS on a Thinkpad R51 with a 1.7GZ processor and 1.5GB of memory. My kernel reports: Linux version 2.6.9-5.EL (bhcompile@decompose.build.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.4.3 20041212 (Red Hat 3.4.3-9.EL4)) #1 Wed Jan 5 19:22:18 EST 2005

Via dual boot, i can also run WinXP on it, where SL works fine. I don't use Windows much and I use Linux a lot, so switching to Win for SL is pretty disruptive.

Here is the startup info from the log file:
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: write_system_info: Second Life version 1.18.4
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: write_system_info: Local time: 2007-11-29T08:35:48 EST
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: write_system_info: CPU info:
processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 13 model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz stepping : 6 cpu MHz : 1699.020 cache size : 2048 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe est tm2 bogomips : 3358.72
->mHasSSE: 1
->mHasSSE2: 1
->mHasAltivec: 0
->mCPUMhz: 600
->mCPUString: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz

2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: write_system_info: Memory info:
MemTotal: 1555440 kB MemFree: 995104 kB Buffers: 23544 kB Cached: 297896 kB SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 314296 kB Inactive: 185012 kB HighTotal: 654720 kB HighFree: 172352 kB LowTotal: 900720 kB LowFree: 822752 kB SwapTotal: 2048248 kB SwapFree: 2048248 kB Dirty: 4008 kB Writeback: 0 kB Mapped: 243284 kB Slab: 35524 kB Committed_AS: 597576 kB PageTables: 2608 kB VmallocTotal: 106488 kB VmallocUsed: 9864 kB VmallocChunk: 96240 kB HugePages_Total: 0 HugePages_Free: 0 Hugepagesize: 4096 kB
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: write_system_info: OS info: Linux 2.6.9-5.EL #1 Wed Jan 5 19:22:18 EST 2005 i686
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: main: J2C Engine is: KDU
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: main: Loading feature tables.
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: maskFeatures: Applying Feature Mask: CPUSlow


Later on, it looks like the graphics setup has problems:
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: main: Initializing window...
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: ll_try_gtk_init: Starting GTK Initialization.
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: ll_try_gtk_init: GTK Initialized.
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: ll_try_gtk_init: - Compiled against GTK version 2.4.14
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: ll_try_gtk_init: - Running against GTK version 2.4.13
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z WARNING: ll_try_gtk_init: - GTK COMPATIBILITY WARNING: Gtk+ version too old (micro mismatch)
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext, fullscreen=0 size=1307x866
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: Compiled against SDL 1.2.5
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: Running against SDL 1.2.12
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: creating window 1307x866x32
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: x11_detect_VRAM_kb: Looking in /var/log/Xorg.0.log for VRAM info...
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: X11 log-parser detected 32MB VRAM.
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: GL buffer:
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: Red Bits 8
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: Green Bits 8
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: Blue Bits 8
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: Alpha Bits 8
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: Depth Bits 24
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: createContext: Stencil Bits 0
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z WARNING: initExtensions: GL extension support forced to SIMPLE level via LL_GL_BASICEXT
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize mipmap generation
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize GL_EXT_paletted_texture
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize separate specular color
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize anisotropic filtering
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize GL_ARB_texture_compression
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize GL_ARB_occlusion_query
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize GL_ARB_point_parameters
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize GL_ARB_shader_objects
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize GL_ARB_vertex_shader
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: Couldn't initialize GL_ARB_fragment_shader
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: GL Probe: Getting symbols
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initExtensions: GL Probe: Got symbols
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z WARNING: loadGPUClass: Couldn't match GPU to a class: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org Mesa GLX Indirect
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: initGraphicsFeatureMasks: Setting GPU Class to Class0
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: maskFeatures: Applying Feature Mask: Class0
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: maskFeatures: Applying Feature Mask: NoPixelShaders
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: maskFeatures: Applying Feature Mask: NoVertexShaders
2007-11-29T13:35:48Z INFO: maskFeatures: Applying Feature Mask: OpenGLPre15

Raphory, you say you run 18.2.1 now? How do you do that. SL tells me there's a mandatory upgrade needed when I try to run that, so I can't run the old version.

Raphory, you say you run 18.2.1 now? How do you do that? SL tells me there's a mandatory upgrade needed when I try to run that, so I can't run the old version.

Looking through my log file, I see a message that indicates the driver is too old. I have verified that I have the latest ATI Linux driver for my video chipset, so I guess that means Linux SL is just not going to work on this laptop. That's disappointing because replacing this 3-year-old laptop is not on the horizon.

Hey Zeus, I confirm, my 18.2.1 version runs ok on my computer. It says there's an update available (in the welcome screen), but it's not mandatory. So I just clic "connect" and here I am in-world

I'm still a noob, but I just booted Windows to see if I messed up something under Kubuntu Gutsy (maybe I should have looked here first
I tested on 3 locations (my home location, Groningen and Hyles) and all three were red on the Lag-meter (client) and they are all green under Windows.
When I quit SL under Kubuntu, my CPU is back to 100% idle, so I dont have any processes running.

Ill try some of the suggestions posted here...

Hmmm ... go figure. Somehow I don't have 18.2.1 among the many versions I downloaded. I didn't think I skipped any versions, but maybe I did. Searching the SL web site, I find archives for past versions of source, but not for binaries. I'm not ready to go down the road of building my own right now.

Does anyone have a link for the 18.2.1 binaries? Or is there a link on the SL site that I haven't found?

Later edit:

Raphory Repine: YOU DA MAN !!!!
I quit whining long enough to realize the Linux download link might be in the clear enough for me to just edit for the desired version. Sure enough, it was and I was able to download and run 18.2.1. So, I'm back able to run SL as long as this client works. I guess it'll eventually break and I'll be back to the dilemma of upgrading my machine VS running Windoze, but for now I'm a happy resident.

Tofu, I have no idea what the tradeoffs are, but I would surely hope you'd consider putting support into the current product for a bridge to this code that supports hardware whos manufacturers are no longer upgrading their Linux drivers.

They are still downloadable

But here is the link

http://download-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/SecondLife_i686_1_18_2_1.tar.bz2

Have fun.

Raphory and Zeus (and anyone else for whom 1.18.3 is bad but 1.18.2 is good) - can you try copying the libSDL-1.2.so.0 from the lib dir of 1.18.2 into the lib dir of 1.18.3 and let me know if that changes anything?
Thanks.