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Final Milestone Reached

Jul09
on 2019/07/09 at 8:11 pm
Posted In: Grids, InWorldz, OpenSim, Second Life, Uncategorized, Virtual Worlds

All current outstanding requests for InWorldz OAR exports are complete.

In August of 2018, when the news came that InWorldz would shut down, I made a personal promise to the residents: I would do everything I could to ensure that any users who had any content rezzed in any region at shutdown time would be able to request, and be provided, a filtered OAR export archive of their content.

Now in July of 2019, after 11 months of near-continuous part-time efforts, I have completed the lengthy list of outstanding requests for OAR exports. Because the content was being taken off-grid, in order to respect the promises made to creators when they joined InWorldz, we needed to provide filtered OARs — only the content owned and created by a given user, or a “whitelist” of alts and collaborators providing their consent for export. This first required that a lot of specialized code be developed for the OAR loading process, and enhancements made to support not only the filtering aspects, but “drilling into” the Contents of rezzed objects, and the Contents of any objects nested within those objects.

It wasn’t just a matter of filtering objects with a subset of those in the region; when you’re looking 5 levels deep into the Contents of an object and 2 out of 5 of the Contents items are permitted for export, it means a new object must be created, and the other 3 Contents items must be replaced with placeholders — and then that new object must be substituted for the one referenced by (inserted back into) the object, which in many cases will trigger that object in the Contents list to be substituted as well, with another new object that has one or more Contents items replaced… all the way back up the parentage of objects to the one rezzed in the region. Also, most asset references needed to be checked and potentially scrubbed according to the whitelist of users. The code that scanned objects for asset IDs had no support for the newer InWorldz “Thoosa” asset storage, just the old OpenSim asset formats, and almost none of the code had support for Thoosa assets.

Just the coding itself was a tremendous amount of work, and if I had been aware of the effort required there is no way in hell I would have attempted it. I would have considered it far beyond that promise of “everything I could do” (reasonably). But I didn’t know that, dug in, and eventually completed the work anyway.

Then began the work of producing the actual filtered OAR export files for users.

Actually producing the OAR files was the easiest part. Trying to get information from users, such as a definitive lists of avatars to include, with authorizations from the email addresses that was used to register the accounts, and a list of specific region names, well that required a lot of user interaction. And interacting people slow down work tremendously. To date, it has required just under 900 email messages, often detailed and lengthy.

There was also the matter of user privacy. If “Joe User” collaborated with “Sally Avatar”, I couldn’t just provide the email addresses used to register those accounts to each of them and ask them to work it out. In many cases former project collaborators had no way to communicate, and I’d need to do that communication myself on behalf of the user requesting the OAR export, in order to protect those email addresses entrusted to InWorldz.

Even worse, I’d occasionally get an email with a confirmation of export authorization from what appeared to be the correct user, but not from the email address we had on file for that avatar account. So I could not accept such consent, and I could inform the user that it was the wrong email address, but for privacy reasons I could not provide the correct email even to that user.

Near the end I began sending a request for confirmation to the officially-registered email address in the hopes that it would reach the user and they could simply reply. But for those who moved on with email accounts, it was a battle between getting it done and privacy, and privacy was always paramount, especially since email addresses often revealed real-life identities behind the avatars.

If you would still like to receive an OAR export file:

I know some former InWorldz users are learning of all this process very late, so I’m still willing to provide OAR files for those who have missed out so far.

If you are still interested in a filtered OAR export of a former InWorldz region, please send a request to jim AT gridmail DOT org. The request should include:

  • the avatar name(s) of your account(s),
  • the avatar names of any creative collaborators who will confirm via email that I have their consent to include their content in an OAR export to you, and
  • the region name(s) of any regions where you had content rezzed when InWorldz was shut down in July.

Setting your OAR file expectations:

Please be aware that if you were not much of a creator of content, your OAR file will be heavily filtered. This means a lot of plywood boxes for things you purchased from other creators for use in InWorldz. That said, if there are third-party objects where you have your own content, for example a texture-changing photo frame where you added your own snapshots, the photo frame may be replaced by a box, but your snapshots would survive in the Contents of that box.

Also, an OAR export file is not really meant for end users. Second life has no knowledge of them, nor do any viewers (including Firestorm). OAR files are intended to be provided to grid owners for loading into an existing (empty) region on that grid. The only real exception to that, which isn’t really an exception, is if you are running your own Halcyon or OpenSim server (including Sim-on-a-Stick), you can do it yourself with the “load oar filename.oar” command. But there are many subtleties, including content Owner and Creator substitution that are best left to a knowledgeable grid owner. Also note: as far as I am aware, only TagGrid has a specialized process for attempting to preserve Creator info, other than the OAR owner, when loading an OAR file.

Milestone 2 on OAR Exports

May23
on 2019/05/23 at 6:05 pm
Posted In: Grids, Halcyon Development, InWorldz, OpenSim, Virtual Worlds

My email: ‘jim’ AT ‘gridmail.org (be careful, that’s .org on the end, not .com)

Back in July of last summer, there was a fast frenzy to save the contents of every running region as a new OAR file containing its own assets. There wasn’t time, or server code, to properly support filtering. But there was a limited amount of time, a few days, where there was an opportunity to save the contents of rezzed regions.

When it comes to exporting the content from InWorldz for former residents, I’ve been thinking of three milestones:

  1. OAR-related server enhancements (COMPLETE): Complete the software changes to allow deep filtering of content based on the Creator and Owner of each prim, each Contents item, and that of any nested objects. This is the “whitelist”, a list of avatar accounts to include. The changes applied went much farther than I could have predicted, and as such it is much more advanced than other OAR filtering code, allowing everything that could possibly be saved to be included, even if the parent prim or embedded Contents item was not created by a whitelisted user. This work was completed months ago, although small improvements continued to be made each week.
  2. Region OAR exports (COMPLETE) : Complete the processing of the list of requests for specific regions, for specific users. I am very (very) pleased to report that, with a couple of special exceptions, we reached this second milestone last night. A total of 166 OARs have been produced, so far, with about 15 more outstanding where I await the user. (The remaining cases are regions where the user requests more objects be included and we await confirmation of authorization to include that content from the creators in question.)
  3. Sandboxes/other (BEGINNING NOW): All the other miscellaneous region requests where there are many many requests for smaller quantities of objects from the same region(s). This generally (and almost totally) refers to InWorldz Sandbox 1-6 regions, although we have some requests for owned content from the InWorldz Events regions and other sponsored ones.

As of last night, the first two are complete. If you have a request for a specific region (other than the Sandbox, and sponsored regions of the third point above), please let me know (by sending an email to ‘jim’ AT ‘gridmail.org’) because it means I am not aware of it.

This work (both of those first two points) were major efforts representing months of work in my spare time. But it was important to me to not just leave everyone without anything; as I said before, the house was on fire but we were able to grab a few things as we ran out, and it was time to give those region contents back to the owners of those wonderful creations. And I could not just leave Elenia on her own to try to get all of this done. We lost a lot. I hope we also managed to save a lot.

Milestone 3 remains. That is, processing of any requests for Sandbox regions and other sponsored regions with shared content. I’ll post another update when it’s complete.

  • I will begin work very soon on providing an OAR file for each Sandbox region where a user has contents, but only for everyone who requests one. There are far too many of them to try to send them out unsolicited, not knowing who to include in that specific users whitelist, or if their registered email address is even still valid.
  • I will automatically include any alts registered under the same email address.
  • I do not have very many requests for content from Sandboxes. Unless there is a sudden burst of requests, it should only take a few days to complete the Sandbox work and reach Milestone 3.

Going forward: Once the Sandboxes and sponsored regions are processed, I will continue to take requests, either for OAR exports from the Sandbox regions, or any other region, and process those on-demand. Should be about a one-week turnaround on getting an OAR export, with the backlog cleared.

OAR file deletion: I’m not sure how long I will keep the OAR files available (it costs me money each month), but I promised everyone I’d keep them available for at least a month, so what I can say is that I will ensure they are available at least until July 1. After that, they could disappear at any time. So download them before then if you may want to access them beyond the end of June.

Sandbox regions: Below is the list of the owners of every. single. prim on all of the Sandbox region OAR backups taken that week in July. (Note: Sandbox 3 seems problematic, there is only one owner, in one OAR backup.)

If you see “(REQUESTED)” after a name, it’s a request that I’m aware of for content from the Sandbox regions. If your name is listed and it doesn’t have that mark after it, and you want an OAR made of the content on the regions (even if it’s only one object), send me the email to the address above request it. And indicate if there is permission obtained or coming from other avatars to include. As I said, I’ll automatically include your alts on the same email address.

The two numbers at the beginning are the number of linked objects, and the total number of prims (LI) for those objects:

InWorldzSandbox1-99.oar :
55 65 a81d4168-93fe-4eb4-8233-6811f9b0372c quadrapop tree
67 94 436b26ef-0361-41f2-82f4-4578c267f53b Stathis Piek
88 14521 94889ded-48f6-4f44-8fb7-e61005bcebd3 Lamat Lisle (REQUESTED)
82 3211 97f1a18f-3b6a-4eb7-97d1-eeca30669c6e Luna Stormfeather
3 175 c197dadb-986a-4072-8694-d431de8f7bc2 Lunastra Silverweb
53 1390 87413431-ede7-44d2-9339-2f205ed5ca73 Desi Olivieri
2 2 598e9f95-369e-41fd-8e2f-5b6b551f9378 London Dryke
1 1 9facd624-365c-441f-a831-99e72fd7d4a5 Marteen Dryke
3 3 209b18d2-8ecf-4a93-a1c2-621a7f50c285 Medea Madson
18 437 5f20f891-2dfe-4d16-b9ad-07945e79667d Scarborough Fair
31 1097 f9b9440d-fe31-4f03-a873-aa1f3262535e Vanity Faire
2 2 f30d862a-df25-4e8a-a14f-03ca0f979dd0 erdette clarity
7 11 cb6ab881-c4a8-4379-b2ba-dc5a170e286e Bavarin Fleetfoot
5 52 7b974238-21a4-449a-87bb-f946932b603a Chloe Landon
25 338 8e2c6ff2-de40-408c-ac89-1ef6be48d7be Parker McBride
1 1 81170349-5990-4fe0-9d96-9e79059ec14b Quit Button
1 1 23f02c9d-74bf-4216-bd7f-6a2b5ac0ffee Bambie Love
1 1 7f61c66d-820d-49ee-806f-d58cc0f8f43d Dell Battery
3 3 23537e89-a02b-4b43-bdf1-3998c280f782 Martina Seetan
1 10 6030332e-0dd8-48f2-82c3-7cb67f1d0c44 Mike Flex
1 1 e44ad399-1344-4c4a-b093-f6eb73939e26 ERA System
1 16 dff0410b-2c64-486b-852d-c5f59291d02a Folker Messerchmitt
1 1 eeb9c5f9-ed56-4ab1-9d3e-6beacba95009 Bain Finch
1 20 0a71e827-ce94-4242-84e1-7dd204ec9684 Ashley Martin
InWorldzSandbox1-final.oar :
442 13008 9abb9262-6de0-44d1-bedf-c92e37e567b5 Beavis Tuppakaka (REQUESTED)
85 674 c8e3f6ba-1452-4cba-9a8c-2cac97b59f37 aqua willowind
195 3269 1ef52e45-4466-46c4-8959-568dd5472588 Tracer Ping
122 4835 69e6ad2f-caa3-4b82-a2a9-da611feb87bc Ballyrae Hanly
356 4743 39b3cde3-f302-4137-bdc1-3774538691ce Calista Lexico
36 12704 94889ded-48f6-4f44-8fb7-e61005bcebd3 Lamat Lisle (REQUESTED)
23 678 ae2e321e-3f04-4121-8cad-84108427b7c9 Kittypunk Starr
19 143 d5c064a6-3805-44ef-b8ee-2c5bf7b8b464 Disbuilder Alt
3 3 f29ecad1-a50f-4ef8-bb4a-8268e921bb6d belavar planiie
6 144 77d7476c-b6f5-4dd4-a535-66a57931a30f shannara llewellyn
9 9 f30d862a-df25-4e8a-a14f-03ca0f979dd0 erdette clarity
59 663 76c8e59f-1fbe-4f6a-a0fd-2a5dd0bc4581 North Glenwalker (REQUESTED)
27 336 6c041bf0-8aec-4b63-b5aa-8fb49db2aa27 Danika Stenvaag
1 1 e58a2bf9-d262-4040-8dc3-aa7d7defbdfa Susan Harley
5 34 dc03d15a-805b-4d59-8061-46acfc35e038 BeachPeach Georgia
13 555 da6bee0a-32ce-4595-86e5-2a4e1602ce63 Wolfe Blackburn
3 4 57ec5b0e-ef43-41da-b0ce-95a31ad5340a Noon Shim
3 3 a271d266-ea1e-4692-8a9c-db21eeadb7b9 Mystical Miklos
5 5 e2233ea6-fa6b-497d-aa64-a48da59eb4b5 Melanie Auxifur
1 1 1bc64aa1-0327-4d26-8f8a-162bb3c2a905 Mayi Lowey
1 1 5378a0c5-1b85-4c6a-99ba-a56ff1c9a60b Jessi deVil
1 1 c197dadb-986a-4072-8694-d431de8f7bc2 Lunastra Silverweb
5 10 452d60cd-796e-4afc-a81d-4a6a8c56b34a Bixyl Shuftan
1 1 e7255e37-bad8-47ef-acad-da83c15a010f Xeheyla Evans
1 1 2fc61284-1dd0-4868-ab67-6c0f69f7589e Mystique Stardust
3 5 f9b9440d-fe31-4f03-a873-aa1f3262535e Vanity Faire
1 1 80ead8e0-62ef-4ff6-8383-b47a72a47050 Yuki Chan
1 1 2f428be4-576b-4765-bc04-324dbf611b09 Dragonfists Chan
1 1 7f61c66d-820d-49ee-806f-d58cc0f8f43d Dell Battery
1 1 0013c558-ce8a-4ea8-9199-5b2d8db446e0 The Dr
1 2 5f20f891-2dfe-4d16-b9ad-07945e79667d Scarborough Fair
1 1 6899446d-0c06-4704-a69c-4bd5b9566625 Tom Finland
2 150 da1d35b4-9941-4279-acb8-596ee679bfee Savanna Koertig
InWorldzSandbox2-99.oar :
1 1 e44ad399-1344-4c4a-b093-f6eb73939e26 ERA System
219 3507 f457c7a7-6be4-4371-ac11-3d731e9eb792 Old Bailey
23 132 ae2e321e-3f04-4121-8cad-84108427b7c9 Kittypunk Starr
23 593 caecc19d-880e-4979-9c35-7eafa234822d Lemuel Recreant
15 1452 abd5a249-122c-4f07-a907-03ebad9b8b8c Dno Vale
5 6 5cef5591-e1db-441b-bc72-8b97cbfe0845 happy terminal
3 3 c0f6ac6c-5a14-47cd-91b3-7f98a9185463 Myenuk Aabye
3 120 eda4098d-0bcd-42ed-9117-dc1356cc2216 Lilly Fluer
8 201 97f1a18f-3b6a-4eb7-97d1-eeca30669c6e Luna Stormfeather
InWorldzSandbox2-final.oar :
82 504 dc03d15a-805b-4d59-8061-46acfc35e038 BeachPeach Georgia
15 1452 abd5a249-122c-4f07-a907-03ebad9b8b8c Dno Vale
738 17968 b4262b0f-7109-4fa3-9273-b2016a14c8ba Jasmine Wildflower
247 4450 80dde1ff-3f4d-4644-aeb3-06aa1e7fe9e6 Raeven Moonweava
14 238 48b9dd1c-12fa-4636-9e40-76f9174c70e0 Knutz Scorpio
25 291 3e637683-f714-4e8d-9cca-4c3181de3c64 Michael Timeless
482 3379 69fa9251-fc42-4eac-88e9-0a654070c869 Webby Merlin
33 412 48b642a2-e89e-4b5c-b486-6cd1f1f092e9 Jennifer Law
220 3508 f457c7a7-6be4-4371-ac11-3d731e9eb792 Old Bailey
1 78 a5736f6b-2507-42b3-87fd-8157de409469 Hamish Stuart
10 799 51796c88-0260-49c3-b76b-2eeff1d44843 Contra Bailey
37 484 1ef52e45-4466-46c4-8959-568dd5472588 Tracer Ping
43 222 09a6643c-86fe-465b-aae6-b87d1da11b33 Digital Digital (REQUESTED)
94 1882 e18c7ae4-de26-493e-96f8-cbf3d8d79439 Sailor Vasiliev (REQUESTED)
45 743 9a864e98-65a6-41f5-9cc7-b0356378f062 judith underwood
8 201 97f1a18f-3b6a-4eb7-97d1-eeca30669c6e Luna Stormfeather
30 918 a98f6349-edae-4209-a0f9-0f4e4e6b60a2 Maerian Sidhevair
24 638 caecc19d-880e-4979-9c35-7eafa234822d Lemuel Recreant
23 132 ae2e321e-3f04-4121-8cad-84108427b7c9 Kittypunk Starr
42 161 87413431-ede7-44d2-9339-2f205ed5ca73 Desi Olivieri
15 217 13913708-2ebc-407a-aa7f-ccccc9fe97ab Chigadee London
11 11 b2c3c4a4-9db1-4a8d-be63-915ff99b3119 Julia Neverset
208 208 73bf6e8a-3f4c-4cdb-bf5d-28f26684df14 Natasia Saintlouis
5 12 8e3bf1e1-54dd-462d-8c20-4b95d2d5ad89 Veggie Ballyhoo
138 138 d6da8be4-8ff2-4af8-a4f8-0e12d3873fe2 Jojo Lowe
2 52 7207e0f1-8460-4641-837c-4a4a1d052d63 RED REDREDRED
1 7 7fdacc75-e63b-4942-b759-743b273c1d82 Psy Vita
11 21 e7ba1b46-495f-40a4-95bd-2537864e8bec Clover Henson
32 34 5378a0c5-1b85-4c6a-99ba-a56ff1c9a60b Jessi deVil
5 5 82aa9b9e-b1a0-411f-8a57-e0cbf9d1bd75 Candy Magic
13 13 25b413f2-dddc-4c56-ac95-54ab16f3a281 Gisela Grace
3 15 bc150525-0dd5-484f-8503-7a8a0c4b70c5 Lokar Zabelin
31 72 4d9a2b77-a2d5-4ec1-884a-7870eca5109d MP Creations
6 31 5cef5591-e1db-441b-bc72-8b97cbfe0845 happy terminal
6 6 19451aa9-83a7-4a92-868a-61b57fe94ba1 almari port
3 120 eda4098d-0bcd-42ed-9117-dc1356cc2216 Lilly Fluer
8 8 7bb20aed-62b8-476e-94ee-295a7c5b866b Sotara Starr
2 2 bbdea767-d4ec-491f-a1dc-4881f49e3144 Roger Masatada
3 17 ca752f2a-86aa-453b-b916-aeeaab5d75c1 Modee Parlez
1 1 94889ded-48f6-4f44-8fb7-e61005bcebd3 Lamat Lisle (REQUESTED)
1 5 0a71e827-ce94-4242-84e1-7dd204ec9684 Ashley Martin
1 1 3e5851c7-a733-40ab-8e3b-773c7a375f00 Holocluck Henly
3 3 c0f6ac6c-5a14-47cd-91b3-7f98a9185463 Myenuk Aabye
2 2 31e278ac-3ea7-477b-8f6e-6c85c110f6f4 Rosa Singer
1 1 20284d83-4e76-477e-9879-998dcb74ff68 Roger0804 Masatada
1 1 f29ecad1-a50f-4ef8-bb4a-8268e921bb6d belavar planiie
1 1 0f3f7634-2bfd-44b9-beb1-e60665276de5 BG Singer
1 1 6a249619-914b-4bab-8d37-856a5f922690 Kemi mcalpine
1 1 189f83f9-4fb0-41ff-83bf-11911f8d6526 Carl Enchanted
1 1 3631cd25-4b0d-45e1-8d6f-322b6882c35f Tuscan Lectar
1 1 3ab11796-8956-49c5-9709-a66544355898 Debbie Phoenix
1 1 e44ad399-1344-4c4a-b093-f6eb73939e26 ERA System
InWorldzSandbox3-final.oar :
830 16108 e7ba1b46-495f-40a4-95bd-2537864e8bec Clover Henson
InWorldzSandbox4-99.oar :
302 1972 37c85706-db91-4a7a-98c6-708b34f3b9b5 Kelly Luckenbach
517 4325 7ec834bc-b7e2-4766-bc29-0fb8dff9d0e8 Tamara Redenblack
81 443 09a6643c-86fe-465b-aae6-b87d1da11b33 Digital Digital (REQUESTED)
448 23817 b5c7ad54-d270-45cd-ad6b-679bc01b8464 Phaze Designer
166 1744 97f1a18f-3b6a-4eb7-97d1-eeca30669c6e Luna Stormfeather
32 1429 4f993bad-4a5a-4fc8-8943-ba4128000dac Jenny Largos
19 365 750e092f-ae04-437a-88e3-a7bbf932ca7e Bruno Marcopolis
70 1182 7b974238-21a4-449a-87bb-f946932b603a Chloe Landon
23 337 9aed7911-fd92-49c0-91bc-c9a09aaf2f21 beladona Memorial
107 140 07e69d75-2834-4554-8311-40d3a533a90b Gray Delwood
16 137 3d7cafe7-05f8-4c22-b258-82f5c4b9d6da Rosa Dagostino
13 13 8cc68f68-5219-42e0-9b50-5ed8ddae4b2b 3G Resident
11 473 e3d1bd3b-6362-42d1-9f82-8e8766619b5f Ghaelen DLareh
5 206 3ec3a9f7-e012-42c2-95dc-7091767d9e52 Chosovi Kurchitov
8 108 e890ee54-99af-454b-8589-f146dc63a0fc Cataplexia Numbers
104 1034 23f02c9d-74bf-4216-bd7f-6a2b5ac0ffee Bambie Love
9 9 9abb9262-6de0-44d1-bedf-c92e37e567b5 Beavis Tuppakaka (REQUESTED)
3 3 7c1a21df-79f6-4868-b959-1a9e7fdde47d Rubis Topaz
34 35 a2a84586-b5b8-4e0b-89b8-bb83193bc6c1 FaiRodis Aviatik
9 117 a4aa548b-e782-45c5-a1f3-598404492cdc Itis Epidii
25 186 87413431-ede7-44d2-9339-2f205ed5ca73 Desi Olivieri
5 211 ea72c5fb-6e5b-43ab-b17f-39460bafc37d Bigfry Bailey
2 14 d5c064a6-3805-44ef-b8ee-2c5bf7b8b464 Disbuilder Alt
1 1 124da794-98ea-4c35-8bcf-95e3077dbb10 sirharley souther
9 61 d7f3459c-6d35-41dd-9de0-2d4c0aa2fedc Leelee Darkmatter
33 33 f30d862a-df25-4e8a-a14f-03ca0f979dd0 erdette clarity
1 1 d56a1d3f-ff2c-4723-a57a-4ecb059cd746 Daizee Duke
1 1 e44ad399-1344-4c4a-b093-f6eb73939e26 ERA System
3 3 209b18d2-8ecf-4a93-a1c2-621a7f50c285 Medea Madson
1 1 e31d8308-cb55-4c72-bcc4-903f7cfeada2 Cat Tulluaha
1 1 c4082e8e-8cc7-49ca-813d-0239d5d08041 shadow margules
1 1 59d68ac7-f80a-41aa-bb3d-98e0033d3ce0 SunnyJim Topaz
InWorldzSandbox4-final.oar :
4 4 94367427-f86b-4006-9609-02d5f05bf37b Salsaroja Cioc
3 24 7ec834bc-b7e2-4766-bc29-0fb8dff9d0e8 Tamara Redenblack
1 90 7f303003-4bed-4123-a8b6-91d5dc91e9b7 Chlamydia Vajazzle
1 1 e7255e37-bad8-47ef-acad-da83c15a010f Xeheyla Evans
2 2 53b0619f-32c3-4f1e-8048-37874103e4b6 Sashi Devi
1 1 ca1c2245-0816-4cbd-941c-12dc9b457b5a Pussy Control

Update on OAR Exports

Feb27
on 2019/02/27 at 2:39 pm
Posted In: Grids, Halcyon Development, InWorldz, OpenSim, Virtual Worlds

(Any updates will be found at the end of this post.)

A quick update on the “export OARs”. These are the OAR files I have been accepting requests for, intended to be personal OAR exports for use on something like Sim-on-a-stick or to be taken to another grid. (Note: you don’t need to be a former region owner or land owner; if you had content in an InWorldz region somewhere at grid shutdown time in July then we can try to recover it.  See my earlier blog post for more.)

I have about 20 of 150 or so known requests done but I might need to redo them. it’s all been on hold a couple of days while I investigated a problem with assets not being recognized on OpenSim. While there is an OpenSim problem in how OpenSim just dumps bad data (see my follow-up blog post for more), I’ve also tracked down what the data is and where it was coming from in Halcyon OAR exports.

The root of the trouble is that when Tranq implemented a new binary format for object storage (project Thoosa) in InWorldz, he did not complete that work everywhere it needed to be. There are three problems:

Problem 1: the code that scans a region for the IDs of assets to save in an OAR file did not support his new format, so it did not include those assets in an OAR backup. This will result in missing assets when the OAR is reloaded outside InWorldz. The problem wasn’t detected in InWorldz since the assets were already there and did not need to come from the OARs. Region backups and rollbacks did not save the assets since they were already available grid-wide.  This is a problem for all of our OAR exports, but not all objects (more infor below).

Problem 2: The second area that didn’t get updated for Thoosa was the OAR storage code to store nested objects in Contents of other rezzed objects.  The assets for those nested objects, if modified after Thoosa was introduced a few years ago, were stored in the OARs in the newer Thoosa binary format, not non-binary XML format needed by OpenSim.  (This part is understandable since OpenSim couldn’t read Halcyon OARs until recently.) This means some objects in Contents were only readable by Halcyon servers, and for those objects, any assets referenced by them were not stored at all, due to the first problem above.  (Non-object Contents items are not affected.)

Problem 3: OpenSim seems to have a problem where if it cannot find an asset referenced by an object, it doesn’t rez the object at all. It tells you there’s a problem and then refuses to rez the object.  This means you cannot just rez a partial object and clean it up in an OpenSim region.

I’ve fixed the first two problems, which should fix future OAR exports and also take care of the “invalid XML” messages on OpenSim and the region hangs problem on OpenSim that can result from the dumping of invalid data to the console. However, this will not restore any assets that weren’t saved in July due to problem 1 above.

However, the process for OAR exports is for me to reload each unfiltered OAR with a whitelist of avatar accounts to include (often just one account, sometimes partners or teams), then save a new “export” OAR for use in other grids.  The fact that these are reloaded under the latest Halcyon code and then resaved as a new OAR means that what does get saved should be usable in OpenSim after these changes. It will fix the Thoosa-specific nested objects to be exported in XML format, and provide at least the nested object itself.

I’ve also tracked down a couple of other issues with XML object formats not being compliant with OpenSim’s needs, which is a bit quirky, and worked around those in the Halcyon code to make them more compliant with OpenSim.

I’m still investigating the effects of these issues, now that I have a clearer understanding, to determine if I need to redo the OARs I’ve already completed or not, and if the code is now complete enough after these new changes that I can proceed again with the remaining OARs.

I should be able to proceed again in another day or so.

Update: That work was completed a couple of days ago, all looks good now. I’ve redone a couple of the region OARs already exported, but I will be redoing ALL of the regions already exported (about 20) over the next few days. Then I’ll be resuming my work through the list I have so far. If you haven’t emailed a request for your content yet, please be sure to email me according to my earlier post.

Loading exported InWorldz OAR files under OpenSim

Feb17
on 2019/02/17 at 12:55 pm
Posted In: Grids, Halcyon Development, InWorldz, OpenSim, Virtual Worlds

The coding is complete and we’ve produced a small number of OAR files for export from InWorldz. In some cases the intended destination is a Sim-on-a-stick personally installation or a grid running OpenSim. While the new OAR files have been updated to be recognized and supported by OpenSim, there is some data within the OAR file that will only be useful to Halcyon regions. These are assets which may not be in an XML format.

Problem: Back in July of 2015, Kitely’s technical lead (Oren) submitted some changes to OpenSim to actually dump any non-XML assets to the region console. This means that if you attempt to load a Halcyon OAR file under OpenSim, the console will stream thousands of lines of jibberish data. Because the data is known to not be valid XML in this case, it may include content that could cause the region to freeze or hang, but in the best case scenario it will simply spew thousands of lines of error messages for much of the oar load. These errors are false-positives (and will hide any legitimate errors).

Solution: You should ignore these errors and let it finish.

That’s all, just wait for it to finish. Then log in and visually verify that it has seemed to successfully load the OAR contents.

For those who build their own OpenSim executables:

For those who build their own, I suggest the following changes to mute the very noisy error handling:
In SceneObjectSerializer.cs, change the first catch (in FromOriginalXmlFormat) to:

catch (Exception e)
{
    m_log.Warn("[SERIALIZER]: Deserialization of xml failed: " + e.Message);
    // Util.LogFailedXML("[SERIALIZER]:", fixedData);
    return null;
}

In CoalescedSceneObjectsSerializer.cs, change the last catch (in TryFromXml near the end of the file) to:

catch (Exception e)
{
    m_log.Warn("[COALESCED SCENE OBJECTS SERIALIZER]: Deserialization of xml failed: " +  e.Message);
    // Util.LogFailedXML("[COALESCED SCENE OBJECTS SERIALIZER]:", xml);
    return false;
}

Both of these change the message to a warning, don’t bother reporting a stack traceback (since this can only happen from one place) and most importantly, completely eliminate the dumping of the invalid data to the console. This will still produce a noisy (3-lines per case) log, but OpenSim seems very verbose in logging, and this is considerably quieter than it is otherwise and won’t make you think something is horribly wrong when all is working according to plan.

I took a quick look at submitting this as a patch to OpenSim but first I must make it clear that I am not going to make it my mission to fix OpenSim issues. I have submitted fixes in the past directly to Justin, and I considered submitting this one using their patch process, but realized that there are a variety of development philosophies and I don’t know OpenSim’s. e.g. whether OpenSim has OAR debugging levels that the XML dump could be conditional upon, or whether I should remove that commented out line (or leave it for developers debugging issues), etc. Bottom line, I don’t know what to submit as a patch. I do know how to change the code to avoid this issue so I have posted that above. Since the key fix is a simple commenting out of a line, I’ll leave it to others to decide how much or how little they want to include from these trivial code changes.

Requesting OARs for InWorldz Regions

Feb08
on 2019/02/08 at 5:43 pm
Posted In: Grids, InWorldz, Islandz, Virtual Worlds

This is a long post. For the specific instructions on requesting your own per-user exportable archive for a given region, skip ahead to the Instructions section below.

Background

You may have read my previous post of my Personal Changes going forward, and effective departure from virtual worlds. This is unrelated to the closure of either InWorldz or Islandz, but rather due to the combination of several factors.

Before I go, I’m trying to take care of former InWorldz users to the best of my ability. This is now specifically exportable per-user OAR archives of the regions taken at the time of the InWorldz shutdown back in July.

It was not possible to save all of the grids assets in the short time available, and without the assets inventories were of no value (they are really just directories of links to assets). However, we could save any objects rezzed in regions, including the assets referenced by those objects, so we let as many people know as possible to rez whatever they could in the few days available, and began saving OAR files of the regions.

These OAR files include many objects, items and assets protected by permissions and even full-perm items that were not licensed for export to, or use on, other grids. That said, there were many objects that users created themselves, or in small teams, and they held the Intellectual Property (IP) rights (copyright) on those items. Thus, these can be exported for their use.

InWorldz received very clear instructions from creators to not provide their creations in these per-user exportable OAR files. However, there wasn’t time to do thousands of individual archive files for each user who had content on a region, nor is it even known who would be interested in these. So a single OAR backup was done, with all referenced assets, for each region running on the grid.

A lot (weeks) of work was done coding load-time filtering to allow creator wishes to be respected and yet restore content from InWorldz, with a specific opt-in requirement for each creator (if desired). Also, because some asset references (such as textures or sounds on prims) do not have any known creator information, a full grid-wide scan of all Contents items in all prims in all regions was also performed, to try to identify the creators of each of these assets and allow them to be identified as being created by the creator of the prim, or by a user who had chosen to opt-in. In spite of this, the creators of many of the textures on prims could not be identified, and a substitute plywood texture was used. This was probably one of the larger contributing factors to Islandz not reaching the critical size needed to survive January.

Soon, with a bit more coding, that technology will be used to try to maximize the content saved in exportable OAR files. This is important to try to provide as much user content as possible while still respecting the wishes of other creators, and protecting their content from permissions-free regions elsewhere.

Islandz is Dead — Long Live InWorldz (OARs)

Without the huge workload of attempting to continue with Islandz, focus returned to the per-user exportable OAR archives from InWorldz. Since none of this content was being automatically uploaded by administrators on a new grid, but rather provided to the owners of the content for their use according to whatever license agreements they have with creators, the decision was made that textures on prims could be included in the filtered exportable OARs if the creator could not be identified. This is relatively safe because in order for the owner of a prim to place the texture, the creator of the texture would have already provided a full-perm (exportable) copy of the texture with the trust of the new user, and with or without an agreement for use.

Users who built their own objects and then texture them would have also been the original uploader of that texture in many cases, and filtering these would needlessly harm the continued use of these creations by the creator of the prims. Also, since the creator was already trusting the user to respect their license wishes, those textures can be included in an export of prims created by that second user. This means the InWorldz exportable OARs will be considerably more complete (much less plywood) than the objects that could be automatically restored by the grid administrators on the new of Islandz. However, they will still be filtered based on the recipient user’s status as owner and creator of each prim in an object, and for the creators of the Contents within each prim.

Let me try to make this point clear: again, while Islandz needed strict enforcement of explicit opt-in, exportable OARs to users can be slightly different in that, in order to put a texture on a prim, the creator had to give a copy of the texture to the new prim creator. That second user could have saved the texture outside the grid, the creator is trusting the second user to respect their license. If the export OAR filter assumes that any texture with an unknown creator cannot go out, then InWorldz is taking control of that agreement with the creator and assuming the worst, also enforcing something that the actual texture creator did not want enforced on the grid. Further, it also prevents people from keeping their own textures on their prims. It is something no other export does and filtering by creator and owner at maximum Contents depth is already very good enforcement (and likely better than ever done before anywhere else including SL). Basically, there was already an agreement in place with the texture creator and it will be respected and not overridden by the grid. It’s very subtle I know, but it’s different when you are automatically uploading content to a new grid on behalf of a user, rather than letting them choose to do so manually.

You can forget about Islandz opt-in completely; that is not relevant to the OAR filtering being done now. That was only important when regions were intended to be restored on Islandz. A “Part 2” of the original plan was to produce OAR files from InWorldz for export to other grids. That is pretty much the only part of the plan going forward. Since there will be no Islandz, these OARs are those exported versions from InWorldz, not related to Islandz in any way. They were captured back in July and it has always been said that they will be your stuff only, because they are leaving the grid.

*** Instructions for OAR Exports ***

This is not a small undertaking, and is being done for free in my spare time as part of my commitment to InWorldz users to do what I can to help them recover as much content as possible, while also trying to respect the copyright / IP of creators. If you do not follow these instructions as closely as possible, or provide false information, it is possible that you may not receive an OAR file.

You will need to provide:
1. list of regions where you had content,
2. your avatar name, and
3. any other avatars from whom you have specifically obtained permission to take their content to another grid.

Note that point 3 above is unrelated to Islandz opt-in. In fact, this entire process is unrelated to Islandz in any way. You will only be receiving the content for the InWorldz avatars in that list, but you will receive their objects as well as your own. Thus this is not something for creators to give permission to but rather for teams and partners to allow a combined archive of major projects, such as the Memory Alpha region for Star Trek role play, or projects like The Land of Lar, or for romantic partners to receive a combined region with their combined creations.

Do not specify an avatar in the list in point 3 unless you have contacted them about this and have explicit permission. That avatar will need to email the addresses below to confirm that they wish to have their objects and creations on that region included in the OAR file you will receive.

If you are a content creator of any kind and you want your content (including objects owned by you) to be included in someone else’s export OAR archive, send an email to the email addressed below indicating:
1. You give your permission to have the content in a specific region or list of regions given to another user.
2. The name of the recipient avatar to whom you are allowing to have your content from that region.
3. Whether you want things included that you have created but they own, or whether it should also include objects where you are the owner.

These OARs won’t be going to Islandz so they won’t be as heavily filtered (less plywood) but you need to provide the list of avatars who have agreed to let you take content to new grids. It is probably very short, usually members of a team, a partner, and/or a list of alts you may have built things with. It’s the best we can do to try to get your content from those regions in July to users.

Send the info above an email to: elenia.llewellyn AT gmail.com and to jim AT gridmail.org and I’ll do my best to get an exportable OAR posted and provide a download link to the avatar requesting.

I’m sorry if this is confusing (it was even more confusing to try to come up with a workable plan here)! I’m doing my best. I hope it helps some InWorldz residents at least. I don’t really have date of completion for the remaining coding, however I hope to complete it in the next week or so get started on OAR files right away after that.

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