Joshua Linden tells us that the rollout of the new 1.21 simulator code (intended to do a number of things, including supporting the new land store) to one rack of servers has not gone so well (again), after reports came in about attachment failures that were traced back to improper permission checks.

The affected simulators have been rolled back to 1.20.1 pending code fixes that are expected no sooner than tomorrow. We expect Linden Lab is pushing hard at this to get the land store back up and running as soon as possible.

1.21 deployment fails again. On hold originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

What happens when you have a Linden staffer, some time, a bit of programming and some off the shelf parts? Well, that depends entirely on the Linden -- in the case of Cube Linden (aka Kyle Machulis), you'd be virtually guaranteed something that isn't safe for work.

Today, though, we've got something from Joshua Linden (aka Joshua Bell), retro-computing fan extraordinaire (an enthusiast and not a cooling device). Armed with a laptop and an Apple ][c, Joshua takes Second Life far into the realm of the deliciously retro.

Continue reading Joshua Linden bites the Apple

Joshua Linden bites the Apple originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Despite initial denials of problems at front-line support, Linden Lab has investigated the performance issues reported by Second Life users yesterday, and discovered the problem affecting the new version of the simulator code.

Bounds-checking code, intending to provide a more stable and less crash-prone environment apparently caused a major performance hit. On the plus side, however, Joshua Linden reports that the cause of the performance problems has been identified and fixed, and that the updated version of the code will actually see a small performance gain, without compromising the safety checks.

There is still testing to be done on the changes tomorrow (Wednesday) which will be followed by a test rollout to 500 simulators. If all goes well, the remaining regions will be updated on Thursday evening. As a bonus, more diagnostic code is included to attempt to diagnose disconnection during teleport attempts.

Linden Lab identifies simulator performance problem originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Joshua Linden of Linden Lab has posted a comprehensive post-mortem of the issues involving the 1.18.5 server release on the Second Life grid. Yes, the viewer itself is only up to version 1.18.4. A previous effort called 'Message Liberation' has provided the first steps in allowing different server and viewer versions to coexist with each-other.

For those people who've ever managed or been involved with large-scale grid deployments, you'll probably sit back and chuckle ruefully, having experienced similar things first-hand yourself, or even accidentally caused them.

Continue reading Joshua Linden's post-1.18.5 server deployment post-mortem

Joshua Linden's post-1.18.5 server deployment post-mortem originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.