Truckdaddy Texan wrote:
how do you know what grid or server you are on? is there a map of some sort? i am central time and my sl partner is pacific standard time. were experencing tdays latest rolling restart but idk what region/grid/ server were on but i woild like to know
my user name is Truckdaddy Texan. thanks
The "Grid" that the main Second Life world on is called "Agni." If you have to ask, that's the one you're on : )
(There's another grid called "Aditi" that's just for testing but you have to take special steps to get there.)
The "Region" name is shown in the top bar of your viewer, and at the bottom left corner of the sim you're on when you're looking at the "World Map." It's sort of like a county in RL - some regions stand alone and some are connected to other ones. They're always squares that are 256 x 256 SL meters. Your avatar is always in a region when you're logged in. When you teleport to somewhere else outside that region or walk across a "border" you then move to a different region which may be on a different machine at Linden Lab.
The "Server" is a little tricky. It's actually a software version - there are many, many machines running the regions of SL but they're generally running one of four slightly different software versions:
About 70% of the regions of the grid are running what's called just "Second LIfe Server". That's the main version that's had the most testing and is supposed to be the most stable.
The other 30% of the regions are divided up into three "Release Channels" or "RC"'s. They're usually running slightly newer versions of the server software that have new features or bug fixes running on them. They test changes on those regions before loading them on the rest of the grid. The three "Release Channels" are called "RC Magnum," "RC BlueSteel" and "RC LeTigre" for reasons known only to the LIndens. Most of the time you won't notice much of a difference if your region is on a RC - I've lived in a region that's on RC Magnum for over a year.
If you go to "Help - About Second Life" in the second paragraph it will say exactly where you are in the "world" and the last line of that paragraph will be the server version your region is using.
Typically new software versions are sent to the 70% of the grid that's running Second Life Server on Tuesdays after the new version has been tested on the Release Channels for a few days/weeks. Those regions are usually restarted sometime during the day Tuesday if changes are being made.
Then, on Wednesdays, the Lab takes proposed server changes and loads them on the "release candidate" channels - sometimes the same changes on all of them, sometimes a different set of changes on each sub-channel. Again, the regions have to be restarted most of the time. This week was unusual because of Labor Day and a bug that was noticed late last week so two of the RC's were restarted Thursday instead of Wednesday.
And that's probably more than you wanted to know about how the Second Life servers are set up...
