Linden Lab (who seem busier today than they did yesterday - but hey, it's an odd time of year) have scheduled a rolling restart of the Second Life grid for Wednesday morning, 2 January starting sometime between 10AM and 11AM SLT (US Pacific) - though, in our experience, a rolling restart almost never actually commences on time.
It's not said what's being done, exactly. Some sim crashes fixed, and 'fixes related to age-verification' - which honestly could mean anything.
A rolling restart takes approximately four hours. Each simulator is restarted (giving five minutes warning) in an order only known to Linden Lab, and boots up on the revised code (a process that takes a couple of minutes only). Not too many simulators can be restarted at once without putting undue load on back-end systems - and even as it is, the Second Life grid performs quite poorly during a rolling restart.
If the simulator you are in gives a restart warning, you will have to teleport to another - and keep trying until you can find one that has already restarted to avoid any further running around.
