Source Of Server Trouble

I have a complete explanation for what happened and I will tell you here! Here it goes:

These are the problems predicted in the prophecy of Darwin made back in March of 2003. It foretold of an anomaly which would form from the sum of the remainder of the unbalanced equation present in every avatar. The avatar, now known as James Miller, would inherit the anomaly in his main programming and would have the ability to break himself from the same restrictions given to a normal avatar allowing him to manipulate asset servers, fly to newbie sims, and post in Hamlet's blog. It is even rumored that James would contain powers that rival even the most powerful Lindens. Unfortunately, beyond the eyes of the average avatar, a massive war raged on between the people and Linden Labs in the real world over unjustified abuse reports. With a stroke of luck, Alpha, the leader of the resistance against misfiled abuse reports, freed the avatar James and helped him release his true power. In Darwin's prophecy, the Lindens would take drastic measures to ensure that James didn't disrupt their perfect abuse report system and no longer unplug his internet to fly to newbie sims. Darwin's prophecy is proceeding in the course that he predicted. As of December 30th, they have attempted to upgrade their servers and run into trouble. The world is beginning its decay and heading towards disaster. If the situation proceeds in the same direction, then the server will eventually experience a virtual judgement day where sim by sim will go down, the object hard drive will be destroyed, and those directly connected to their avatars will experience an avatar deletion. Those that do survive (Darwin predicted 7 males and 16 females) will be forced to rebuild the world and undergo the same process four years later.

Hopefully I will be one of the survivors.

This reminds me of an apocolypic view of Second Life, which is a general view of humans, in most recent times anyway. I do agree this spells serious troubles with Linden Labs, and there needs to be serious consideration on how to deal with it, and soon before they start losing customers.


So my fellow Second Life residents, the quest continues for a better life beyond it!

There are alot of on happy customers linden has out there right now. And it is true the situation should be addressed. And right now im one of the unhappy customers.

This is what philip Linden said!





"Hi,

We are still having problems with heavy login load on Second Life, as of 2:30PM PST on 12/31. The grid is currently open, but logins are very slow. We are working on some quick fixes that we are testing right now, and additionally are getting new hardware ready to replace the equipment that is still running slow. I don't have an ETA for repairs. We may get some speedups in the next couple hours, otherwise there will likely be grid downtime tommorow (1/1) as we change hardware.

We're here at the office - doing all we can. Apologies for the problems"

Dude... no offense guys, but I've noticed that /every/ time there's even the slightest problem logging in or otherwise functioning in the game, there's this avalanche of negative comments on the forums. Partly, this bothers me because I think pretty highly of Second Life and what Linden Labs has managed to do (make a visual online community that gives us nearly complete control and that is actually pleasant to socialize in) and I don't like it when people bash something I like. Partly, it's due to the perspective I have, in that I realize I'm one of those lucky citizens on this planet who has both a connection to the Internet and any sort of disposable income at all (especially given how little a financial burden SL is at the lowest tier) when there are people in this world who barely have enough to even eat on a daily basis, and many more who don't even have that.

I don't think people realize how destructive this attitude of instant gratification is. I've noticed that we ("we" including Americans at least, since that's the only cultural group I have any authority to speak on) collectively have this knee-jerk reaction, whenever something goes wrong and it constitutes even the barest inconvenience, to get hot and bothered and say things like "well, I'll take my business elsewhere if I don't get my way." It seems pretty obvious to me that the Lindens have been working on these bugs pretty hard and have been rolling out fixes on a continual basis. Is making idle threats really going to help the situation? Furthermore, is that the sort of attitude we really want to foster in our community? Frankly, I've been so turned off by some of the negative comments I've seen in the forums that I don't even bother finish reading threads anymore, and I've only just gotten to the point where I decided I needed to say something about it.

Tens of thousands of people recently lost their lives in the worst natural disaster in recent history. The survivors don't come from as fortunate livelihoods as you or I, and are at risk of going homeless, jobless and without basic human necessities as a result. Linden has done a great job on Second Life and they've made a truly remarkable community. The fact that the login servers are struggling to keep pace with the growth is proof of that. Are things /really/ that bad?

Anyway, this really wasn't directed at anyone specific, or even this thread in exclusion (I thought the original post was kind of funny too). I just think people need to get a little perspective before they go on griping about how hard they have it when it's a minor miracle they have it at all.

And what bothers me is people who will accept any kind of old rubbish from people who are being paid to provide something and are not coming up with the goods.This is the fourth day people have been stuck at that abysmal preparing inventory spot.

With a game as unpredictable as second life,where you have to log out 100 times a day due to one problem or another(why does this not worry us?) you'd THINK that making sure people could actually get into the dam game would be a priority.

Ever since the grey patch this game has been up the creek without a paddle and coming onto the forums preaching how much you adore Second Life wont paper over the cracks,we ALL love this game otherwise we wouldnt be here now would we.Spend time asking LL to actually get off their arses and shut the thing down rather than telling them how wonderful they are and we might,MIGHT get back to something like normality.

Huh. I only got logged out once today, and I had no trouble getting back on. Not sure what you're doing wrong.

I'm curious as to what you feel whining and complaining in the forums is going to accomplish? How is it going to make things any better?

From what I saw, the Lindens (including CEO Philip) were in the office on New Years Eve, trying to work through the problems. I'm not sure what more you could ask of them.

If you have a fundamental problem with the service you are receiving for the money you are paying, then either accept it as normal for any small company creating cutting edge technology, or stop paying and go find yourself another way of entertaining yourself.

But pissin' and moanin' about it all in the forums ain't gonna accomplish squat.

- Ace

I have a 10-year-old theory, people only complain in public forums about things they don't really understand anything about

This is a great way to attract attention under a pretense of anonymity. People who complain about something not working always attract attention. After all, we who cheer when things are being fixed around the clock, we're only boot-lickers, eh?

Someone mentioned "several people became angry". Wow. I have seen, say, about 100 unhappy people in the forums. That's great, 0.7% of the total population. I really, really hope that you are so unhappy as to go elsewhere. And on the other hand, I'm very, very happy to see that 99.3% of the resident population is either fully supporting LL in their efforts to fix stuff or at least silent about their griefing.

Boot-licking is cool. Yes, I have been on the "other side" - I know how it is, when you're working around the clock, trying desperately to get things operational, and emails, IMs, and phones are ringing all over the place, urging people to work faster and give explanations of what went wrong quicklier. It's tough. It's even tougher when the people who are complaining don't really understand how hard it is to fix those problems, and all they say is "I have paid you US $9.95 for lifelong service, now hurry up, I want my service fast again, I don't care what you have to do to make it work again, I'm not technically-minded and I don't really want to be, you have a problem, fix it, I'm a paying customer, I've got my rights, now make it fast!!"

Oh, how often I have read those types of emails...

Of course, after a few years, you develop a natural immunity to griefing. The point being, is it really worth losing your temper with someone who doesn't want to understand and who really doesn't care and has no idea what it means to work hours and hours making tests to fix something which is complex way beyond the average mind to understand? The correct answer is "no, it isn't". Even if one unhappy customer means probably a group of people leaving, well that's ok, when compared to the cost of the time you need to keep them happy - just writing emails back means losing half an hour or so, and this is precious time that should be employed to fix problems, not answer back to griefers (who won't become happier, no matter what kind of reply they get).

But is this what Linden Lab does? No. Surprisingly, it's Philip Linden himself that drives over to the LL site, sees what's wrong, probably offers moral support to techies working hours and hours in front of their computer terminals, and writes a few answers back, and a few posts on the forums, apologising. Seriously now: how many companies do you know that do that? There was a virus spread through IE and all across the internet about the same time the LL grid was not available (no, it was a mere coincidence; SL's servers are Linux, and immune to virus). I didn't see Bill Gates around the Microsoft forums apologising for writing the crappy software they sell. Did any of you?

What the griefers fail to understand is, at some point in time, Bill Gates stopped to reply to griefers, because it simply was worthless - just a waste of time. Griefers cannot be ever contented (that's by definition!). Paying attention to them is pointless. Ignoring them - and concentrating into making things work again - is far more productive.

So, I'm glad that we haven't made LL lose their collective patience with the griefers, and are still willing to give us status reports on how things are proceeding. Or explaining to us how things work, what choices they have made. Or even allow us to participate in Town Hall meetings and ask them what's coming in the future, and even strongly disagree with their choices, and voice our opinions. I dread the day this will end, just because the griefers - yes, all the hundred of them... - waste so much Linden time and patience, that they are simply not to be bothered any more.

"People who are being paid to provide something and are not coming up with the goods"? Please. We're all adults here. Don't insult our intelligence. Go grieve somewhere else.

- Gwyn, Boot-Licker Extraordinaire, And Proud Of It

*claps soundly for Gwyn*

There is a proverb that goes:

Watching someone on fire feels differently than being on fire yourself.

i have trouble logging in for about 3 or 4 days now, and i dont think i be back at this rate:/

Ok; there was downtime on logins on the 31 (and before; I assume.)

but... wow; a new SL version with login queues came out 3 hours before new year!!. And everything worked fine after that (well... sometime long login times) but heh... you only have to wait!

I applaude such a quick in-extremis fix, in the middle of the holiday season!

If that was not of that fix; I would not be on the verge of upgrading my "trial" account to a normal one I'm pretty impressed with the overall stability of SL and the possibilities offered.

Good points, Gwyneth.
I've had several jobs where unexpected problems and bottlenecks ground things to a halt. Everyone worked extra hard to get things going again, but many outsiders asumed that the slow service was the result of laziness or incompetence. It wasn't! Nothing like being called names while you're working off the clock trying to do the work of two or three people. Very frustrating.



Another good point. If anyone wants the grid to run smoothly, it's the Lindens, whose livlihoods depend on the success of SL. I'm not saying they're perfect, or that but I find it hard to believe they're giggling at our plight and throwing paper airplanes while the grid is in limbo. Second Life is a new frontier (pardon the cliche), and with new frontiers come glitches.

mini hijack
Reminds me a bit of Disneyland when it opened in 1955. Walt and the crew worked like crazy to get it done on time but there were glitches aplenty- rides broke down, a gas leak in fantasyland, high heels sinking into fresh asphalt, drinking fountians nonfunctional, out of control crowds due to counterfit tickets. Disney had a shrewd but brilliant response to the complaints: "Disneyland will never be completed as long as there's imagination in the world."

Well...

I agree most with Maddox and Gwyneth. I like SL a lot, I think the service is generally good, and I'm quite impressed with the way the staff came in over the holidays to try to recover from a hardware failure, including Philip.

That being said, I haven't been able to log in for a couple of days now, despite the login queue and the new patches, so I guess I can't say I'm a completely satisfied customer yet.

But in general, I favor offering constructive suggestions over trashing people who are working hard. E.g. trying to think of things that could be done to make the login wait easier to sit through, like being able to do a little offline building, or cleaning out your inventory. This problem was apparently due to a hardware failure. It won't be the only such failure. A good strategy in coping with such failures in the future might be to offer more "disconnected" functionality, so we're not left completely without service when the servers have these little moments.

I appreciate people wanting high levels of service. I pay monthly for my account. But I think you have to look at the service you could get from comparable vendors before threatening to take your business elsewhere. Is there someone else out there who has a product as good or better, at as good a price, but with better service? Not that I know of. If you think you can do better, go for it, but I know I couldn't. So I'm willing to stay with SL and hope they get things working again soon -- and I'd like to help, if I can, whether by testing new patches, proposing possible load-balancing strategies, or just staying calm and providing good coherent descriptions of failures to the tech folks so they can get a better idea of what's going wrong. (You might be surprised at how helpful -- and how rare -- that last one is.)

And at least I'm getting caught up on Forum posts.

Just a few thoughts,

Neko

I'll, uhh, try to use my powers to let y'all login whenever ya want and stuff.

Neko, it seems that's time for you to join the SLUG - the Second Life User Group, which has its own group forum here. Its purpose is exaclty trying to get interested residents to propose ideas, thoughts, and suggestions to Linden Lab, in an organized way.

An unworking grid hurts resident's business. Yes. That's true, a fact, and undeniable. However, I should bring on the other end of the scales the idea that SL is a "new frontier" (as Olympia put it so well), and, thus, things aren't 100% operational yet. Is this just a lame excuse? No, business seemed to flourish even in the Wild West without law and order - it was just harder. The same thing happened when the World-Wide Web hit tha Internet as new medium for commerce. All the argument brought forward nowadays with SL - which has a working economy, despite all the glitches - could be used, copy&paste, to describe the Internet around 1994/5 or so. If you can spare the time, search in dejanews for the posts on the USENET around that time. Things like "with such faulty browsers, doing Internet business will NEVER be possible" or "we have so many glitches and downtimes to major servers now, we will NEVER use this 'new paradigm' as we use, say, telephones". These were the years when 95% uptime on the Internet was pretty good - now we complain with anything less than 99.9% (two orders of magnitude!).

So, some people, having arrived at the New Frontier, turn back, disappointed. That's ok, and to be expected. After all, it took some 100 years for California to become the US's richest state - despite the first decades of "trouble" there. And the World-Wide Web surely turned away thousands of customers, the "early adopter" who shook their heads, complaining about the many problems. Well, they're coming back, 10 years after, with their tails between their legs, humbly begging to "get online" again...

Perhaps SL is just something for us "early adopters"!

I hear you, Gwyneth. But I have to say, it's hard.

So far, my experience has been very frustrating. My poor AV is stuck atop a teleport tower, unable to move, fly, or teleport, and her clothes are disappearing, so she is being stripped of all dignity. Despite having IM'd for in-game help, which never responded. And having to beat the client to death with Windows Task Manager to get it unstuck. I mean, it's sucking 100% of my processor doing ZIP!

Now I do understand that for some reason, a lot of people are in the same grid, and that dogs the sim. That's why I wanted to teleport/fly/walk to another sim, where I might give myself a much needed makeover.

So far, I've had little pleasure and a lot of frustration in my first few days of SL.

Any clues? Any comfort? Please? Pretty Please?

Aww Vendaia, that's really Murphy's Law with a vengeance! I mean, you couldn't have a larger stroke of bad luck - it's almost impossible!

Let's see...

- the grid is shaky
- as a new resident, you log in at the Welcome Area, which is overloaded
- thus, everything lags like hell
- teleport gets easily "broken" under those conditions
- your Windows setup is below par
- you have probably too high settings for your video performance (SL tends to be slighly optimistic about what your graphic card can handle or not)

On the other hand...

- the grid is usually fully functional around 99% of the time, you just were on at the wrong place
- yes, the Welcome Area in Ahern, where all the new residents return to when they relog (it's their home) is generally overcrowded, but these are also exceptions
- since you couldn't teleport out of it, your "home location" and "last location" are set to te same spot, which is unfortunate, but usually an exception
- your clothes "disappearing" is just a temporary condition - it happens mostly when the textures for them are not being downloaded completely or so (or, worse than that, when the textures you have on your clothes are actually physically stored on one slow sim...)

So, the good news are, it's highly unlikely you get the same set of conditions again. Not at the same time, at least!

Well, I have to admit I left a nice long message about SL problems... but then came back and deleted it.

I mean, hey, it's obvious. SL is broke. It has apparently been broke for months. It apparently is going to stay broke unless someone starts exercising common sense and installing recognized, logical computer protocols. There is continual ghosting, ridiculous login problems (which really folks, should be so simple...), griefer problems, inventory problems, constant relogging... these things continue week after week, month after month. So what good is yet another message regarding SL problems? If clients get ticked off enough at the downtime, they'll find new activites.

Forum messages help folks blow off steam, so they serve good purpose.
But I for one am tired of making suggestions and seeing the same old mistakes continuing on (I am a professional business consultant with a solid background in computer programming) . I have other things on which I need to focus my time and attention. I had actually at one time considered joining and buying some land... but under the current conditions? Such would be foolish.

SL is losing clients because of this. It's losing income because of this. SL is a business. We are clients. A business is expected to deliver product. When it doesn't, clients stop buying. It's just that simple. SL will get the point.

However, I do want to respond to a couple of things:
No, the grid is not "fully functional 99% of the time". It is disfunctional to an unacceptable amount.
Yes, Vendaia, you are likely to have EXACTLY that same scenario happen over and over again (getting stuck ANYWHERE, not just Ahern, having your clothing stripped off as you "rez" and not being able to move... forcing an SL relog and possibly even restart of your whole computer system. Happens all the time.)
And no, your Windows is not likely set wrong, your video card set wrong, etc, because just about EVERYONE has these problems and has been having them for quite some time now. I mean, angry messages flooding a forum don't usually happen for just no durn reason.

So let's be honest here, OK? I know opinions differ and viewpoints differ, and hurray for that because that's what makes life enjoyable, but facts are fact.

HOPEFULLY... the Lindens have now had a big enough system shock that these things will get fixed within the next 30 days or so. We can only hope. If not, well, you don't have to be a business consultant to predict that outcome.

well, can I use your post and search and replace SL for Windows and LL for Microsoft?

Just had some lousy 4 hours stamping on virus because I couldn't log in to Microsoft's Windows Update site to get a fix... uh wait... wrong world?

I like the way you "professional programmers" have so much to say about system administration Anyway, I'll refrain from ad hominem attacks. I just mean, there is no perfect software. Just look at the Internet, it took almost 25 years until it became stable enough to allow people to depend on it for business

Think about the Old Rule of Solid Software: it takes about 10 years to get a piece of software to work flawlessly. You can reduce that time by getting an order of magnitude more programmers working on it, as well as much more people to test the software and report bugs. And yes, I know that a good approach and a flawless design will give much better results in a shorter time

BTW, disregard my previous post. It only made sense before Wayfinder edited it

Anyway, yes, LL is going to lose customers. It's a tough, unforgiving world out there. My only question is, will it make a difference? I'll bet that it wont. This outage is not really much different than previous ones.

Don't EVEN get me started on Microsoft. Profitable? Yes. A good example of a properly run computer company with a good product? Far from it.



I'm so glad to hear you didn't make an attack there. For a moment there I had the misunderstanding that's exactly what you did. My mistake I guess.

Let's see... I own a computer software and consulting firm. I have a degree in computer programming and business administration. I've debugged systems that stumped the best of them and at last count... I have an significant number of years of that under my belt. Are my qualifications satisfactory?



I don't think that anyone (including me) is asking SL to work flawlessly... we just want it to work to the degree that we're paying... which is through the nose. And the things that are going on now have nothing to do with debugging code (although indeed, that is quite a bit of it). Server crashes, hard disk failures without backups/redundancy/mirrors, severe lag times, and extensive logon times is systems oriented and a matter of systems management, pure and simple. And that is my professional opinion. Not that I'm right-- that's just my opinion-- to which I'm entitled as is everyone else here.

I have to agree with Wayfinder's analysis. While this youngster is in no way as qualified as him or the many others who have posted on this thread, I do have experience with networked systems with multiple servers and a variety of interfaces, both off the shelf and custom built interfaces. I also have the experience of playing other internet based online games as basis of comparison to the recent SL in world experience.

As we all know, the network can only perform at the level of its weakest link - whether that be actual server hardware, cabling, routers, switches, server OS, the quality or the interface(s) programming / code, and then MOST importantly, the knowlege and expertise of the the system administrators and the technical support team. (Further comments on that subject would only be edited by Linden....)

The reason SL is degrading in terms of performance is the fact that everytime LL touches the programming codes with a fix or a version upgrade, it IS going to cause an unexpected performance and/or user interface problem somewhere else. I have seen this happen time and again, particularly where the network is being built, repaired and expanded / scaled on the fly. Obviously, SL has been fixed and patched to a point that current performance issues, excessive downtime, and an overall decline in network speed, seems to support Wayfinder's bottom line evaluation - SL is broken, perhaps beyond repair. AND, and the same time continuing to add user's. I would like to think LL is working on a completely rewritten and 'new', and actually scaleable, SL that can be rolled out in the future.

Bottom line, I just paid LL $35.95 USD to use what has to be the most expensive online VR world on the net....and I expect to get what I pay for. At the moment I feel as though I am paying First Class Swiss Air fare, but flying AEROFLOT - on Standby status.... Fasten your seat belts folks, I am afraid we are coming in for what is termed by the airline industry as an "uncontrolled landing" - aka, plane crashes and all aboard perish.

Hang tough.

E.

My Two Cents:

I think Second Life doesn't work as much as it could, but is still a very good product. And it's still the best virtual world of it's class in the world. All the others are about killing, and none others I've seen so far have a programming language.

I think you're all right to complain if it doesn't work as well as you expect, but at the bottom line, I think they're still currently way ahead of the rest.