Initial testing of the Minkata-alpha shard

[rarified]

...

Went in with the Guild of Healers avatar, closed the door and window to my Relto, went to the nexus and to the hood. One person was in the city when I went in with the regular Minkata launcher, was in there when I went in with the alpha launcher.

Thank you! This bit of information helps pinpoint where the hidden connection between Minkata and Minkata-alpha is!

I’m still wrestling with tax filing, but the end is in sight, and then I can get back to debugging.

_R

[catherwood]

I've had Minkata running just fine and felt confident enough to add the Alpha to my pile. Got thru all the DOS steps, ran the .bat and it began to download a new patcher, but it rather quickly threw up the "failure to delete old patcher" error box. Going back to original Minkata, it said it needed to download updates, maybe? That just died/crashed. But on a second attempt, I was able to get back into the original. Walked around for a bit, then logged out/quit. Tried the .bat for Alpha again, and still got the "failed" message. Any thoughts? (Am I supposed to open a ticket for these questions? sorry)

[rarified]

Thanks for giving it a try!

First, for this stage of testing just make posts on this thread. It’s easier if anyone who tries to use Alpha can see what others have encountered, and how they resolved problems. We can set up the bug system once we expect Alpha to run smoothly.

About your failure to delete issue, do you remember if you installed MOULa and Minkata under the “Administrator” account? If so, you may need to run the command prompt window (DOS) as “Administrator” as well because of file permissions. Or it may be easier to place your Minkata directory somewhere where the permissions are not as significant. Such as in a folder on your desktop. Then try running the batch file as your normal identity.

Let us know how you fare!

_R

[Treehugger]

I had been a bit scared to try this c prompt stuff but in fact it all worked well (on my win 7 laptop - not tried my win 10 one but it still doesn't let me play normal Minkata so I'm not holding my breath).

I was hoping to find Doobes' pub, given that the files were downloaded, but I guess we'll need to wait for a formal unveiling?

As others have noted, initially the logon details were retained when logging in for the first time to the alpha. Then when returning to the normal external Minkata, I had to re-enter my logon details, but ticking the box to save them in future worked, so when I swapped from one launcher to the other, the login details were present on both the internal and external versions. Edited: actually, no, I just tried internal followed by external again after a short break, and the external details were missing. But then swapping back and forth, the details were present once again.

Also, as others reported, the changes made on the alpha client (I closed both doors to the book room in my Hood, closed the blinds in Teledahn and the doors to the Teledahn bucket unloading room, for example) were reflected in "normal" Minkata.

[rarified]

I believe I've fixed the problem with age state leaking from one shard to another. The saved login problem is still present at the moment. Give it a try when you can.

You should get a new copy of UruLauncher-Alpha.bat. There was a change needed there. You may also need to re-run UruLauncher-Alpha at least once from a command prompt to reset permissions on it.

Both shards should be up now for the rest of today. Fixing the login problem will likely require a rebuilding of the client.

_R

[HenryMikel]

Alpha vs Prime states

Two small variances:
Hood:
Nearly everything seems fine except for (what RAWA called) the Scoring Server. No matter which version you are running the Hood informational imager lists you as visiting - no difference between visiting Hood Prime or Hood Alpha, both imagers reflect every visit.
Same for the Hood Pellet scores. They both combine any Pellet activity. I uploaded my pellets to my Hood scoreboard - leaving me with zero in my Ki. I then shut down and switched to the alternate version and my Ki was empty and the Hood scoreboard had the same updated total I had just left in Alpha.
The actual Ercanna pellet ovens are independent. I left the Press up in one with 3 pellets in it. I then shut down and switched to the other version and the Press was still down. I opened it and collected one pellet and they added to my total. Returning to the first version, the Press was still opened and still only missing the two pellets I had originally collected.

Everything else in the Hoods worked independently: firemarbles, cones, doors, garden lights, images in the picture imager. etc.

Relto
In Relto, everything seemed to work indepently (even the cannen' songs). Except the Book Locking Tabs are still conected. I tried about 6 different combinations but they always crossed the versions. Seems weird to me.

[rarified]

Thank you HenryMikel!

I took a look at what I hoped was a simple explanation for those remaining bits, but unfortunately the simple cause wasn’t there. I’ll have to do some experimenting and examining the log files.

Would you say from the remaining issues moving the book locks are the quickest thing that can be changed to demonstrate the problem going back and forth between the shards?

_R

[Hoikas]

Those are all states stored in the database rather than in state blobs (on disk in MOSS).

[rarified]

I am aware of that.

The problem is coming from the configuration of the database. Minkata and Minkata-Alpha share the same database, but with different schema. The stored MOSS procedures in the schema under some circumstances are referring to objects in the default (public) schema (used by Minkata), rather than the separate schema (for Minkata-Alpha). And there may be SQL statements embedded in MOSS that also don’t properly access objects using the schema search path.

The task is to identify the remaining places that cross-schema references are happening.

_R

[HenryMikel]

Would you say from the remaining issues moving the book locks are the quickest thing that can be changed to demonstrate the problem going back and forth between the shards?

_R

I believe so. You don't even need to leave Relto to test.