Turning a snapshot into a module

[Carl Jokl]

I followed the documentation about turning a snapshot into a module
but I don't appear to have been successful in getting it to work. I am
currently trying to package up the crime scene I created on my
Wonderland virtual machine based server to deploy on my home server.

The module seems to deploy successfully but when I try and enter the
world my client shows the sky and stops without getting as far as
loading the avatar. I have gone through and rechecked the paths as
well as looking through the client logs to try and find any clues as
to what is going wrong.

There is a warning in the log which said it failed to find the
viewproperties.xml but I don't know if this is connected. I did
deviate from the instructions in one regard in that the instructions
were based around building the new worlds module directly as part of
building the source but I build the world module on its own without
building it with the rest of the source. As a world module seems to be
just a structure for the art and metadata of a world this seemed ok
but I don't know if it makes a difference.

[Matthew Schmidt]

I don't know if it makes a difference either.... when we built the
tutorial, we only did it one way and that worked for us. YMMV.

I would suggest building the entire source tree and seeing if that
solves your problem. Also, you might want to clear your cache (click
"Advanced" on the log in dialog).

[Carl Jokl]

I have started the process again and followed the guide to the letter.
I have been very careful to get all the details right and also compare
with the garden arches project to be sure the settings are correct.

I have integrated the project with the rest of wonderland and built
from the main wonderland build script as per the tutorial. It still
does not work. It is becoming really frustrating. The only difference
I seem to be able to find between my project and the tutorial project
is that my snapshot contains image files. I have modified the image
file xml metadata files in a manner consistent with that of the
modules.

The other aspect of why this is frustrating is that there are no clues
in the log as to what is happening. I have increased the details of
the logs and still nothing.

When I open the world it gets as far as showing sky and the voice
control but does not load the avatar and stays stuck in that state. I
have gone through the server content directories after the module has
been deployed and the directory contents are all as I would have
expected.

[Jonathan Kaplan]

That is odd. Have you looked in the Darkstar server logs to see if there are any errors there? Would you consider posting your sample module (or a simplified version that has the same behavior) so that others can take a look?

[Carl Jokl]

I have no problem posting the module. I don't think there is any
ownership issue and it is full of borrowed models from google
warehouse anyway. I can have a look at the server logs. It would be
nice to have some clue as to what is happening so I can narrow it
down.
Is there a good place to send the module. It am not sure publishing a
module known to be broken via the normal module warehouse would be
such a great idea.

[Jonathan Kaplan]

I agree about not publishing broken modules in the warehouse :-) I would create a zip of the module source, and upload that to Google Docs. You can then publish the document and post the link here.

[Carl Jokl]

Sorry for the delay. I am just about to look at the DarkStar logs but
I put the module I am trying to deploy on my own web server and so the
file can be downloaded from http://www.jokl.co.uk/files/crime-scene.jar

[Carl Jokl]

I found this exception:


[java] INFO: Initialize Wonderland Server [java] 21-Feb-2011
11:39:37 org.jdesktop.wonderland.common.utils.ScannedClassLoader
createDB
[java] WARNING: Scanned classes in 3699 ms.
[java] 21-Feb-2011 11:39:37
org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.WonderlandBoot loadPlugins
[java] INFO: Initializing plugin:
org.jdesktop.wonderland.modules.avatarbase.server.cell.AvatarPluginSrv@7be536d6
[java] 21-Feb-2011 11:39:37
org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.cell.CellManagerMO getComponentMap
[java] WARNING:
org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.cell.CellManagerMO.Components not bound
[java] com.sun.sgs.app.NameNotBoundException: Name
'org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.cell.CellManagerMO.Components' is not
bound
[java] at
com.sun.sgs.impl.service.data.DataServiceImpl.getBindingInternal(DataServiceImpl.java:
788)
[java] at
com.sun.sgs.impl.service.data.DataServiceImpl.getBinding(DataServiceImpl.java:
530)
[java] at
com.sun.sgs.impl.app.profile.ProfileDataManager.getBinding(ProfileDataManager.java:
49)
[java] at
org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.cell.CellManagerMO.getComponentMap(CellManagerMO.java:
355)
[java] at
org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.cell.CellManagerMO.registerCellComponent(CellManagerMO.java:
311)
[java] at
org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.cell.CellManagerMO.registerAvatarCellComponent(CellManagerMO.java:
297)
[java] at
org.jdesktop.wonderland.modules.avatarbase.server.cell.AvatarPluginSrv.initialize(AvatarPluginSrv.java:
30)
[java] at
org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.WonderlandBoot.loadPlugins(WonderlandBoot.java:
94)
[java] at
org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.WonderlandBoot.initialize(WonderlandBoot.java:
55)
[java] at com.sun.sgs.impl.kernel.Kernel
$AppStartupRunner.run(Kernel.java:951)
[java] at
com.sun.sgs.impl.kernel.TransactionSchedulerImpl.executeTask(TransactionSchedulerImpl.java:
619)
[java] at
com.sun.sgs.impl.kernel.TransactionSchedulerImpl.waitForTask(TransactionSchedulerImpl.java:
414)
[java] at
com.sun.sgs.impl.kernel.TransactionSchedulerImpl.runUnboundedTask(TransactionSchedulerImpl.java:
476)
[java] at
com.sun.sgs.impl.kernel.Kernel.startApplication(Kernel.java:715)
[java] at
com.sun.sgs.impl.kernel.Kernel.createAndStartApplication(Kernel.java:
420)
[java] at com.sun.sgs.impl.kernel.Kernel.<init>(Kernel.java:
353)
[java] at com.sun.sgs.impl.kernel.Kernel.main(Kernel.java:
1147)
[java] 21-Feb-2011 11:39:37
org.jdesktop.wonderland.server.WonderlandBoot loadPlugins

It mentions the Avatar plugin and the world does fail to load the
avatar. There are a lot of info log lines mentioning the handling of
the different content in the world implying the server is at least
trying to process it. I don't not any error messages for any of the
content items.

[Carl Jokl]

I don't know if anyone is interested but I am part way along in the
process of developing code to automatically convert a snapshot into a
module. The guide instructions struck me as involving a process that
seemed ripe for automation. My code makes use of Java's built in SAX
parsers to identify tags that need their contents changes as part of
the conversion. I am trying to make the code extensible. I am also not
sure to the degree to which there is an overlap between what I am
doing and the subsnapshot importer / exporter logic.

[Josmas Flores]

Didn't Morris put together a module to do this? snnapy in unstable?

There is no overlap with the subsnapshots project that I am aware of.

cheers,
Jos

[Morris Ford]

Yep. Here's the forum thread.

http://groups.google.com/group/openwonderland/browse_thread/thread/2d75b42def5f1f40/660f543ed3910d2e?lnk=gst&q=snappy#660f543ed3910d2e

[Josmas Flores]

I thought it was documented somewhere in the community wiki? am I wrong?

cheers,
José

[Carl Jokl]

Looking at what has been created it looks like it could be a useful
script. I don't know that the module I have worked on is totally
wasted as I have been able to learn a bit along the way. I have been
using a pure Java programming approach with hopes that I could
integrate the module with the server admin screen such that the
snapshots would have an extra link on them to convert them to a
module. This would open up a page where the module details would be
entered and upon completion the browser would be sent the module jar
file for download. This could then be directly uploaded to another
server.

I was also looking at annotations so that modules could provide an
implementation of one of the classes which would allow the
functionality to cope with conversion and export of different cell
types without having to know how to convert each one in advance.

It was this kind of detection mechanism which made me think of
something discussed in the sub-snapshot exporter where there was also
the question of handling cell types which were not known in advance
and what would be a good way to deal with that.