Rolling Restart to deploy 1.24 the week of 2008/08/18

We are tentatively planning a rolling restart this week to deploy Server Version 1.24 to Second Life. However, we're waiting on the results of some last tests before the actual schedule of the release is finalized. Once it is finalized, we'll post the planned schedule on the status blog (http://status.secondlifegrid.net), complete with release notes.

/me w00ts!

/me w00ts too

Is this going to be a repeat fiasco of 1.23 rollout or will you be testing the code fully before releasing it? Inquiring minds want to know

Huge amounts of testing are ongoing, and have been ongoing for the last few weeks.

We certainly hope and believe that this rollout will go more smoothly than 1.23 did.

That being said-- as we've said before, there are some things that are near-impossible to really test. Second Life is an environment with 5,000 servers, nearly 30,000 regions, and 60,000 people online. We can't test a new server version under full load without putting it on something of the same scale. We test everything that we can before we roll it out, of course. But, as we've seen in the past, there are a couple of things that tend to zap us. The first is "edge cases", things that happen rarely, and just statistically don't show up until we have the code running on thousands of hosts with tens of thousands of residents using it. The second is load-related things, where a bug in the code overloads central systems. If the bug is subtle enough, it can be missed on smaller installations.

All of that being said, quite a number of people in QA have been working tremendously hard over the last couple of weeks finding the bugs, and the devs have been working tremendously hard quashing them. We think things will be good. Fingers crossed.

Shouldn't this announcement appear on the blog as well? I was of the impression that blog.secondlife was the authoritative source for update information.

Great news Prospero.
This being MONO release, any idea when viewer 1.21 will be released? or will be it be a test viewer for a couple of weeks?

You can use the beta viewer to connect to the main grid.

On the login screen, press SHIFT + CTRL + G (or is it ALT + CTRL + G?) then change the grid to connect to from "Aditi" to "Agni" with the menu thingy that appears to the bottom right.

It's not possible to use Mono yet but the client already recognizes the new LSL instructions. It should be possible to use them after the rolling restart since this is already a version 1.21.x.

/me warping in every corner of my sim, waiting for the rolling restart...

Thank you Kaluura I am aware of that. I am still curious as to when 1.21 will be a mandatory release for everyone.. As it affects my venue in certain ways. I always like to plan ahead lol so an ETA on that would be nice to have

Many thanks for that and i will keep my bits crossed also

Expect a 1.21 viewer release candidate shortly after the 1.24 server release goes to the grid. (Aside: apologies that the viewer and server have similar-but-not-the-same numbers... I know that's confusing.) Depending on how things go with the 1.21 release candidate, it will be hopefully within a few weeks that that becomes the latest stable release. I am not sure if or when it will be a required update.

Note that even with the 1.21 viewer, compiling scripts with Mono will remain optional. There will be a switch so that you can compile scripts with either Mono or with the old LSL infrastructure. Anybody will be able to run scripts compiled either way regardless of which viewer they're using.

In using the Beta 1.21 (until the production release), will we have to compile the scripts inside the prims themselves or will we be able to compile form inventory?

/happily spins circles chasing tail!

Will the v1.24 mean less lag involved?

This will be great! I already wrote an imagemap demo for the new prim touch functions, and cant wait to test it on the main grid:

http://www.daniel.org/blog/2008/08/11/multifaceimagemap-for-sl/

No... don't ask them to give us less lag. Every time they try to improve something, something else gets fubared.

Last I saw, the attack on that one begins with 1.25 or 1.26 (measurements more than changes at first)

1.24 is supposed to mean less script lag once people get their scripts recompiled with mono. It may take a while to get all the vendors to put out mono upgrades for their products, so you may not see a drastic change all at once. I expect it to be a gradual improvement. If the lag that you notice isn't from a high script load in the sim you are in, I doubt that it'll make a difference.

If you want more information about Mono for Second Life - what it can do or how to use it - the wiki page, http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mono has details.

If you're interested in any of the new llDetected functions in this server release, the release notes, http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Server/1.24 has links to documentation for them.

Note that Mono scripts can only be created (saved) from a 1.21 viewer. Any viewer can use previously created Mono scripts. The llDetected functions require the 1.21 or later viewer both for creation and use -- older viewers will not transmit touch positions.
The 1.21 viewer is currently in QA, and a release candidate should be available next week.

Besides Mono what new features are in the 1.21 Viewer?

Other than Mono and Chat moderation, will there be anything else in the 1.21?

For those keeping track at home -- the pilot roll to 526 regions has begun.

The regions were for the most part randomly selected, but some regions were included on purpose -- including all of the Linden sandboxes on both the main and teen grids.

Apologies, I seem to have missed "chat moderation" until just now. It seems, frankly, a frightening prospect. Would someone kindly point me to where I can read more? I know that should be obvious to me. TIA.

Note that this thread is about the 1.24 server release; there will be a thread about the new viewer release candidate when that happens.

You can find release notes for what's new in the server release here:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Beta_Server/1.24

For more information about Mono, see Babbage's blog post here:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/08/20/mono-launch/

So, what are the group moderation features for voice chat?