Server 1.34.2 Deploy (emergency -- tonight!)

A bug that caused inconvenient sim crashes is cured by crashing all of SL on New Year's Eve. Okay.

For those who complained: first off, LL did not crash Second Life, they intentionally restarted the servers. Big difference. Secondly, I do not believe that LL went out of its way to intentionally cause you problems on a night where they know very well that more activities were going on than usual. The only reason they could possibly have decided to do this on such short notice was because it was necessary.

Now what would be so important that it could not wait a day? The only thing I can think of that would cause such an emergency event at such an inconvenient time is if they needed to install new code before the calendar rolled over to a new year at midnight SL time. I see they were scrambling to do that. They started the roll earlier than announced because the code was ready sooner. They were in an hurry.

Some of you report that your sims crashed. If you really mean "crash" and not just "restart" -- was it after midnight SLT? Think about it.

I'm sorry but I have difficulty imagining how this "emergency" was created in the first place. And if I understand the problem, it seems relatively trivial to the VAST basic functionality that SL users need to enjoy NEW YEARS. There is an ongoing misguided sense of priorty at Linden. Sometimes the truth hurts.

If the rollback was to fix severe sim crashes, then I don't think it's working. I'm still experiencing crashes at a frequent rate and the sim that I hang out at was rollbacked. Getting to the point that I'm about to quit all together. Happy New Year!

Since the whole idea of the rolling restart capability is to be able to run different server versions simultaneously,

*I WANT TO HEAR AN EXPLANATION OF WHY ANY REGION NOT EXPERIENCING A PROBLEM WAS RESTARTED IN THE MIDDLE OF NEW YEARS EVE*

Surely it's possible to set a new simulator version to be used upon region restart and then not restart the region until it crashes? If not, why not?

I own two homestead sims and have full owner/manager/estate rights. The regions are Bonaire20 and Conception Bay. This morning one of my tenants (a mother and her two rl daughters) were bothered by a griefer who made aggressive sexual comments in chat to them. I wanted to ban this individual (name is kent Aura) immediately, but could not because the Region/Estate window will not open. I have tried multiple times on both my islands. The window simply does not open. This is a new problem, occurring only since last night's server update and rolling restarts.

Also, I notice that when I select "My Land..." it doesn't show the properties I own.

I can't protect my tenants by banning this particularly nasty griefer thanks to whatever the heck LL released last night. I would open a ticket, but know it's a pointless exercise. My sims are homesteads, so I don't pay tier to LL and don't have a premium account. So even though I spend A LOT of real money on Second Life every month, I am just a peon to LL. Someone to be ignored.

I already have a couple of land-related issues I can't get resolved. The images for my islands do not show in search no matter what I do, and the CB region landing point is under water, but there's no way for me to change it. However, these issues pale in comparison to a situation where I can't ban a truly abusive individual to protect my tenants. This is OUTRAGEOUS. I have no confidence that posting this here will get me any help, either. LL's lack of respect for its customers is breathtaking.

Sirius, I rent a homestead and both region/estate and land menus are working fine. If there are other estate managers, have you checked with them? Since 2 sims are involved, it sounds like there's something wrong with your account.

I cant login to sl at all. It keeps saying "Despite our best efforts something has gone wrong..." But checking the grid statis page i see nothing about login issues. I uninstalled then reinstalled secondlife just in case. Still can not login. Any suggestions?

1) Try changing your start location

2) Try a different viewer. http://modularsystems.sl/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=sections&Itemid=5

3) In desperation just to communicate with folks in SL install the desktop so you can log in
http://radegastclient.org/wp/

The requested URL /newreply.php was not found on this server

Why

A crash can lead to inventory and asset loss. Personally I wouldn't want that to happen to me. I'd rather have the simulator restarted in a sane fashion. If I lost a build because the sim crashed underneath me and they knew about the bug but didn't fix it, I'd be screaming bloody murder.

After this restart, i thought of what we should have done at our club. Our party went to about 50% its prior size after a restart at about 12:04AM Eastern. Here's what could have been.

http://www.theclubchronicles.com/?p=24

tex

Three minutes after ET midnight on New Year's Eve is not "a sane fashion".

Whatever risk there was to inventory had been there since 1.34.1 rolled on 12/15, over two weeks previously. Delaying for a few lousy hours would not have appreciably increased the risk.

Well, in fact that's what we did do. We evacuated as many of our guests as we could on the extremely short notice (remember that the original announcement of the emergency restart said it would begin two hours later than was actually the case) to a mainland parcel I own in Busiris region (fortunately the 17 traffic fraud bots on another parcel there didn't prevent this).

We set the music stream to our live DJs feed, rezzed a small dance floor, and continued to wait for half an hour until a scripted object I had in our sim began responding again, and we ushered our guests back to the club, minus the ones who didn't make it out in time or gave up waiting for the restart to finish.

But getting guests to jump around the grid while LL plays musical servers is not my idea of fun. There was no reasonable excuse for this that I've heard yet.

I also think it's time for Linden Research to align with standard industry practices and start disclosing security vulnerabilities in their products and services in a timely fashion, at the very least after the vulnerabilities have been closed.

Dunno if that's true or not.. If it is true and the problem was that evil-doers could easily crash sims, LL was probably (and rightfully) concerned that a group would go around crashing all the most popular places at once. As annoying and inconvenient as a RR was on New Years Eve, the fallout from having the most popular regions restarting all at the same time could have been even worse.

Though it would have meant a much longer night for Lil & company, trying to work things so all regions were up +/-10 minutes of :00 would have been nicer. Getting booted at 11:30 is one thing. Getting booted at 11:55 is a very different thing!

We have these things called time zones...

Anyway, if "it was a SEC- thing" is the excuse, we should have full disclosure of the vuln, now that it is fixed. If we're being sold a defective service we're entitled to be informed of known defects.

i tryed to log in to sl about 10 times but it wont let me enter but it will let me enter sl web is it because of this because when ever i try to log sl tells me that i was unable to connect to sl and to check with secondlife.com/status?
am i just going loco or does this have something to do with it?

Uh. Yes? Maybe you could reread my post..


I thought it was pretty clear in the OP...

That's not disclosure of the vuln, that's just claiming that there is one.

Security by obscurity doesn't work.

As for the time zones thing, the whole deal should have been deferred at least a day. And since it was taking more than half an hour for the sims to recover, aiming for +:30 wouldn't help much.

Now it looks like we're in for a scheduled hour-and-a-half gridwide outage on Wednesday. Is this related? No way to tell, it's a secret.

It really does seem that the US believes that it IS the centre of the Universe...!

I think it must be blazingly obvious to everyone now that there is a serious problem in SL.

It was unfortunate that some US celebrations were spoiled by the need to cure an issue that had global implications, but that is too bad. I think the complainers need to get a sense of proportion.

Most RRs occur in the middle of my SL day, which is a nuisance to say the least, but I have learned to live with it.

Now we have a return to 2006 it seems - central servers are being maintained /upgraded/fixed (insert word of your choice>...

Next week's outage is darned inconvenient too, but I just grit my teeth and bear it. It would be good to know what the panic at LL is...Lil, WTF is going on?

In closing I merely point out that I pay a fair sum to LL (indirectly, sure) for the privilege of making my home in SL and I am a Premium account - so I DO care about what happens here.

Since the server code is closed, so you can't check any explanations, what sort of disclosure would satisfy you?

For what it's worth, I'm inclined to give LL the benefit of the doubt here, simply because it must have been considerably more inconvenient and expensive for them to undertake this unplanned exercise on New Years Eve than it was for any US residents who found their SL celebrations thus disrupted, and I'm certain that LL consider their own convenience and and financial interest even if they don't seem to pay much attention to ours at times.

Hey now, I'm in the US..

Hello,

I am a content creator in Second Life. My most popular object is an old retro TV set, with an Atari 2600 attached to it.
The TV is scripted to stream a selection of YouTube clips from the 1980's. It's a nostalgic thing and has been selling quite well.

However with the latest server "updates" the TV has been working less and less. Until now, in this latest "update", it is no longer working at all.

It seems to me that Second Life has become too unstable for content creators to bother with it anymore.

As a content creator I must warn Linden Labs, that you are heading down the wrong direction here. Once you pass the tipping point, where content creators no longer see the point in creating anything, your Second Life will be over.

Content creation is the heart and soul of Second Life. And Linden Labs seem to be working hard on alienating all the people who make this thing worthwhile. Without content you have nothing.

So why do you keep making things worse? Every new server "update" you come out with, takes us a step further back. And when this is pointed out to you, in forums and blogs and letters by the thousands, you give us the circling wagons response.

This is not fitting for a company depending so much on it's userbase.