[sldev] SNOW-2: getting to the bottom of the curl crashers

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi folks,

We're trying to decide just how important SNOW-2 is:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SNOW-2

This is our tracking issue for the vague crash reports we have involving
curl.  We're not getting good stack traces or anything like that, and
people have generally not been complaining about this particular problem.

However, based on some evidence that Merov noticed and is digging into
now, it would seem that the curl crashers seem to happen in the map code
(because secondlife.log indicates to be accessing S3 at the time of the
crash).  Furthermore, the problem generally might be linked to improper
use of curl in the viewer (e.g. overusing the same curl handle).  This
might be a case where gentle use of the map works like a charm, but
using the map while chatting and teleporting and using the inworld web
browser may be another story altogether.

So, we'd like you to help by hammering on this issue, and reporting your
results (either positive or negative) in SNOW-2.  In particular, some
things to try:
1.  Lots of things that would use HTTP simultaneously (e.g moving around
in the map, then quickly teleporting before the map loads in all of the way)
2.  Really use the map.  Zoom out, zoom in, try to find regions with
missing textures
3.  grep the code yourself for libcurl usage, and figure out other ways
of torturing that code.

Let's figure out if we need to figure this problem out before declaring
this "Snowglobe 1.0".

Thanks!
Rob