We have Poltergeists!

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Angelic Helling-Masala
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We have Poltergeists!

Post by Angelic Helling-Masala »

So the last few weeks we have been seeing some really odd stuff in regards to objects in world to include:
- mesh and sculpty objects suddenly loosing textures and flattening size
- objects disappearing without a trace
- objects disappearing but leaving a collision
- objects that cannot be edited or even selected without using an area search
- and the latest one today, an entire building suddenly loosing textures and moving itself halfway across the region to link itself to another object.

This is very frustrating while trying to build. We would build an island, and a few days later suddenly parts starts to deconstruct. In the case of the parts attaching randomly to other parts, we have to essentially delete the build and rebuild it.

https://gyazo.com/42b9971bed8068868c0a587535773fcf

https://gyazo.com/50760e32efa9e6b9e248058acb3d7a24

https://gyazo.com/4e259a4b80dc0e2404d9dea2721e0f3d
Last edited by Angelic Helling-Masala on Thu Dec 10, 2020 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Angelic Helling-Masala
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Re: We have Poltergeists!

Post by Angelic Helling-Masala »

Additional info:
- every part of the affected object is renamed to "object"
- doesn't seem to be creator specific
- only seems to happen to objects uploaded to in world

Dec 11th Edit:
- Another destroyed part showed up with the same symptoms; deformed, textures stripped, renamed "object"
- No unknown visitors since Dec 7th
- found and deleted a handful of micro objects, i.e. objects that are invisible and minimized size. No scripts or anything in the contents. Named "object"
- Noticing that affected objects tend to have multiple prims linked together that came from other separated objects.
Last edited by Angelic Helling-Masala on Fri Dec 11, 2020 4:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Ilan Tochner
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Re: We have Poltergeists!

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Angelic,

Please look at the Account History page of the account that owns this world and verify that everyone who visited the world is someone you trust. Next please try to disable scripts and not do any world editing yourselves then come back the next day and see if anything changed. If nothing changed you may have some rouge script running in your world. You may also want to use the Replace Current Outfit on your current outfits folder to ensure you don't have any rouge script attached to you that may then modify objects with your permissions. We've very rarely had griffing in Kitely but "holiday gifts" and other objects can be used to spread scripts that once rezzed will attach invisible objects to your avatar or hidden in your world, which could then be used to grief you.

A much more common cause is what is often referred to as "user error", i.e. people accidentally selecting multiple objects when modifying an object they selected using area selection. This tends to happen a lot more when people disable the range limit on object selection in the viewer, then what can look like you only selected the near object could actually include selection of many objects that are mostly hidden behind it in the distance.

Regardless, we can restore your world from an automatic daily backup up to 10 days in the past. This will result in the loss of rezzed objects and other world changes you've made to the world since the backup was created. Please let me know if you wish to use this option.
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Angelic Helling-Masala
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Re: We have Poltergeists!

Post by Angelic Helling-Masala »

I'm thinking user error is not probable considering that everyone on our team has 10+ years experience in SL and content creation. :)

We have not seen a visitor list on the world's account. Will check again here shortly.

Are we sure this is not a potential bug in the asset server?
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Dot Matrix
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Re: We have Poltergeists!

Post by Dot Matrix »

Visitor list
Have the world owner log into the Kitely website, then use Go To... > Account History to check who has visited the world.
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Angelic Helling-Masala
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Re: We have Poltergeists!

Post by Angelic Helling-Masala »

So, the issues continue with no resolution in sight. We cannot continue to build if everything we do is undone ... much less try to open to the public.

Unsure what we may do ... but we are looking into other options.
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Ilan Tochner
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Re: We have Poltergeists!

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Angelic,

It's Saturday and I've spent more than an hour with your group on this issue today. I've asked the Tattered Sails account to provide me additional information which you have yet to do. If you want our help to find the cause of this problem then I need you to provide me with that information. We can't move forward if you don't help me help you.
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Re: We have Poltergeists!

Post by Ilan Tochner »

To be clear, we need to have a specific instance of something that exists in one world activation and disappears in the following one. We need to know the name of the object and it's location (coordinates) inworld. That way we can look at our server logs for that asset/object and see what's changed between the world activations.
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Angelic Helling-Masala
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Re: We have Poltergeists!

Post by Angelic Helling-Masala »

With a professional IT guy on our team, and the rest of the team with over a combined 70 years of SL experience, we kinda have a very good idea of what is going on. That does not include some sort of avatar attachment causing these issues.

As far as we know, there is not a scripting function that will take prims from random objects created by different accounts and link them into a new object. The only thing that can do that is an issue with the asset server. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I understand this is frustrating ... it has been for me. We've poured literally hundreds of hours into building the world. An hour of time is a drop in the bucket compared to that.

We've locked down the sim for the moment. Drastic problems call for drastic measures.
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Angelic Helling-Masala
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Re: We have Poltergeists!

Post by Angelic Helling-Masala »

Our group has two mega worlds. Would it be possible to load OARs from different time/dates on each one for direct comparison?
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