Linden Lab is obviously still having trouble with load on back-end Second Life databases (highlighted by a short burst of stability problems this-afternoon). It seems they have some potential mitigation for the issue which will be deployed as a rolling restart tomorrow afternoon.

The restart is supposed to take 6 hours from 2PM SLT (US Pacific) tomorrow, Thursday 17 January, but given the recent performance of rolling restarts, it potentially run longer than that (despite what we think is probably an already padded estimate).

Continue reading Short-notice Second Life restart, Thursday 17 January

Short-notice Second Life restart, Thursday 17 January originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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.

Continue reading Second Life: rolling restart, Wednesday 2 January

Second Life: rolling restart, Wednesday 2 January originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 29 Dec 2007 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab Lab have just announced that a rolling restart of Second Life simulators to fix inventory issues (that resulted in some inventory service failures yesterday) will be rolled out at 11AM SLT (US Pacific).

That's a two hour rolling restart with 67 minutes notice. At two hours, it means it's one of the high-speed ones that restarts large numbers of regions at once in unpredictable patterns, and that usually spells large-scale disruption. Not a lot of warning - especially to people with meetings and events scheduled.

Very short notice rolling restart for the Second Life Grid originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yesterday saw the preparations for today's rolling Second Life update - an 'update to core systems' (Linden Lab have never really explained what that means, but we can reasonably assume we're talking central databases, monitoring systems and a chunk of the backbone code).

The update caused assorted difficulties throughout the day yesterday, and apparently partial services outages through most of the morning this-morning, leading up to today's rolling restart of simulators.

Continue reading This week's patch process not kind to Second Life

This week's patch process not kind to Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab have announced a server-side update to the Second Life grid that will take place across two days, specifically Tuesday 27 November, and Wednesday 28 November. The first day will see a core services update, followed by a rolling-restart of the grid simulators the next day.

The upgrade is to support an upcoming feature in viewer 1.18.6 - and that's where things get a bit ... sticky.

Continue reading Contentious Second Life update next week

Contentious Second Life update next week originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Brace yourselves Second Lifers originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Second Life rolling restart underway originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hope you really didn't have any plans in Second Life this week. A lot of folks scurried to rebook events and meetings out of the way of Tuesday's update (sure the Grid as-a-whole might not restart, but it's a pain having the simulator you are in give a five minute warning in the middle of a class, a concert or a business meeting).

Lots of Tuesday items were rebooked to Wednesday after the original short-notice announcement. Then Wednesday's things got rebooked to Thursday to avoid a rescheduled update. Now it looks like many of Thursday's events will be rebooked to Friday or next week as the update has been re-rescheduled for Thursday. There's plenty of grumbling reaching us here.

Short version: Same timeslots - central services update at 10AM SLT (US Pacific) followed by a rolling restart between approximately 1PM and 5PM SLT - all taking place on Thursday 8 November, instead.

Tomorrow is yesterday - Second Life update rescheduled again originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Second Life servers are being updated with fresh code tomorrow, Tuesday 6 November. There are two phases to the update, and neither one involves taking Second Life down or additional downloads.

Phase one starts at 10AM SLT (US Pacific) and involves unspecified updates to unspecified central systems. We're told this may cause "slight delays to log-ins and to online notifications" (Stop laughing in the back there. We presume they mean in addition to normal).

Continue reading Short notice rolling restart to bring fresh server code

Short notice rolling restart to bring fresh server code originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.