A Mainland Sim Down for Two Whole Days

[Prokofy Neva]

This is just totally bizarre.

I have never seen this happen in 12 years.

That is, even when all of Second Life used to be down in the early days of 2004-2005, or a sim might stay down for a day or more, I never saw THIS.

An old "colour sim," a Linden-zoned sim called Brown, simply malfunctioning and remaining unworkable for two days and counting.

First, it was gone from the map after the rolling restart. And still gone. And gone so long I had to call about it. Then after filing a ticket January 31 on this, I closed it because I saw it on the map again. But then I realized no one could walk or teleport into the sim. My tenants were all howling. And puzzled. What could this be? On the map, yet no teleport or accessibility.

I imagine the two or three other rental agencies on that sim are also puzzled and getting howls.

It's just so unlike Second Life. TWO DAYS?

Usually a sim that they can't fix with a restart or two is imply moved to another server. It's taken off the server it was on and MOVED to one they know works. My God, there's 30,000 plus of these sims, and that means whatever, 1/4 of that as quad servers or whatever the math is. Lots of servers. Like spinning tops, they move them around. Sometimes in the old days you could even see the sims you were sharing a server with, people had scripts. And if you discovered terrible lag, and saw you were a "server sharer" with a laggy club with 40 avatars, the Lindens would simply move your sim.

Maybe they don't have that ability now? But surely they do.

TWO WHOLE DAYS? Are you mad? What's taking so long? Let's say they had to check every physics item that was colliding or whatever it is they had to do as a task list. What's up after TWO DAYS???

I asked the Lindens at the help desk whether they had decided not to do maintenance on this world any more because they are launching Project Sansar."

"Certainly not," says an oldbie Linden who knows what a colour sim is.

But, this is how it starts...

Naturally I am very aware that the Mainland -- 5,000 sims with a lot of them half empty -- is low hanging fruit for the Lindens to ditch. They have 25,000 or whatever the number is of private islands (see Tyche's latest surveys). They're more motivated to fix things for those customers who are often higher-paying with many more sims than Mainlanders.

I'm trying to think if I ever saw an island down for more than a day. That I may have seen. But Mainland???

 

PS Finally back up again after multiple chats and tickets. Two days is unacceptable for a sim to be down. 

[EdmundPendragon]

Do you know what the maintenance they have been doing this week especially for the little over 13 hours on Monday?

 

As a retired IT technician, if I was in their shoes, I know what I would be doing in preparation for Project Sansar.

However having no proof in this instance I will keep that to myself. But I do find it very curious that I have not seen

any explanation.

 

Has anyone seen or been told what they are REALLY doing?

[Prokofy Neva]

@EdmundPendragon they have regular rolling restarts with the latest patch on Tuesdays.

But this is way beyond that.

I have land on some 50 sims, this is the only one I knew of that was down.

Project Sansar doesn't run on the same grid does it? It has a completely different engine, structure etc, does it not? So it wouldn't be on the SAME servers? Or would it? 

My understand was that it was on a separate grid, and that you "can't get there from here," it's literally another world, like Mars. But what do I know, I just work here.

Maybe this jet that they say has been flying and needing its engine swapped out while flying was finally getting close to bursting apart. I don't know. But then you'd have a lot of sims in trouble, no?

[Chic Aeon]

Well this seems pretty basic but you said that you closed the ticket after you saw the sim back up (or what appeared to be up). Did you put in a NEW ticket?  Could it be that they have no idea there is a problem? I am on mainland and when I have had issues they were fixed very promptly.

 

 

[Alwin Alcott]

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EdmundPendragon wrote:

Has anyone seen or been told what they are REALLY doing?

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folding alu hats for people who think all is a conspiracy

[ChinRey]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

PS Finally back up again after multiple chats and tickets. Two days is unacceptable for a sim to be down. 

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You may want to keep an eye on it. I tried to enter Brown shortly after you posted that PS and couldn't. It kept flickering in and out of view, it was not possible to walk or tp in and flying in got me stuck.

A quick chat with live support fixed it but since that happened after you said it was back, you may want to keep an eye on the sim.

 

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

They have 25,000 or whatever the number is of private islands (see Tyche's latest surveys)

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Not that many. 16,787 by 29th January. There aren't as many as 25,000 sims all in all in SL anymore. The total number of sims will drop below 24,000 this month - it may even have happened already.

[Pamela Galli]

We need a THIS IS WHY SL IS DYING Bingo card.

Surely some of you witty people could come up with something?

 

Also, how about a contest to find the oldest use of THIS IS WHY SL IS DYING. 

[ChinRey]

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EdmundPendragon wrote:

Do you know what the maintenance they have been doing this week especially for the little over 13 hours on Monday?

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Yes. It was a cleanup after a failed Russian attempt to hack SL to influence the next Governor election.

 

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EdmundPendragon wrote:

As a retired IT technician, if I was in their shoes, I know what I would be doing in preparation for Project Sansar.

---

Ebbe Linden has said that Second Life and Sansar are developed and maintained separately by two departments independent of each other. I know some pople wouldn't believe Linden Lab if they claimed the sky was blue but in this case that's standard procedure for all the big IT companies and LL wants to be a big IT company.

[Derek Torvalar]

Wow.

Two ragequits in less than a month. Things are looking up.

Not nearly as hysterionic as some in the past nor as entertaining but still mildly amusing.

(The first one has reappeared btw, after about a week off to cool down lol)

[Kristin Linden]

Hello there!

In the future, if you ever come across a region that is down (outside of any scheduled maintenances) or doesn't seem to be functioning properly we ask that you please contact Support to report the issue. Additionally, we encourage you to submit an Abuse Report in case the region is having problems due to griefing so that our Governance Team may take a look.

When completing the report, please provide as much detail as you can and include a screen shot if possible. If an account name is not available, please file the report as using the account name of "Governor Linden" and include an explanation in the details. In this case, please include the name of the region that is down in the description if you are unable to get onto the region to report any issues from there.

For more information on Abuse Reports, please read our Guide to Filing an Abuse Report in the Second Life Knowledge Base.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Filing-an-abuse-report/ta-p/700065

Our records currently show that Brown is up and running as it should. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Best Regards,

Kristin Linden

[Prokofy Neva]

Kristin,

I've been in Second Life for 12 years and run a rentals agency, my tenants were on that sim.

As my post states, of course I filed a ticket immediately as soon as a few hours went by.

I contacted Live Support several times as well.

I closed and then re-opened the ticket when in fact I saw that the sim being on the map didn't mean it was working.

Another rentals agent with properties on that same sim also filed multiple tickets.

Yes, Brown is up and running after two days, but that's an insane amount of time for Second Life Mainland.

The issue for Brown was not griefing as far as I know.

[Prokofy Neva]

@Chic Aeon yes, I'm not stupid. I re-opened the ticket of course. AND contacted Live Chat several days.

And so did another rentals agent on that same sim, multiple tickets.

[Prokofy Neva]

I'm not surprised. 

If I, at my micro-level, decide to sell some parcels, think what land barons with 100 sims do.

For me, it's not loss of business as I have brand-new customers all the time, some just entering Second Life, and I try to help retain them. I have others who leave but it's for all the usual reasons of break-ups with a partner or lack of RL money.

HOWEVER, more and more I experience these hardships and some of my customers do and they leave:

o loss of inventory - sometimes it reappears, sometimes not. These are sometimes STAGGERING losses -- and to this day inventory loss just makes NO sense. What is an asset server if not a server of assets???

o log on as Casper -- it gets old trying to do Avatar Test and then reconstruct my regular outfit.

o things like cats or other attachments get stuck on me with the same bewildering message about how there are no clothing files to put on -- but I'm trying to take OFF

o my entire stock of gatchas on the Marketplace -- hundreds -- suddenly dumped off due to a technical glitch

o inability to load content of objects -- just an impossible hobble in business.

o inability to load land menu

And no, I don't have packet loss. Yes, I am wi-fi. But most of the time SL works on wi-fi as everyone knows. I've tried putting in the direct line -- no better. Maybe it's my phone company. I have a fairly new computer but not top of the line -- it meets the specks. For 12 years I've been fiddling with Internet connections and computers, I should have a degree in computer science by now.

I have a high tolerance for SL problems. I once spent a year on 64 draw distance in the mud. I went for probably 2 years or more with an inventory that changed from 40,000 to 50,000 daily, losing all my rentals infonotecards which I was forced to then stash inworld. Etc.

Resources are being put into a world that works better because perhaps more thought was put into its foundations than SL, which began as a scrappy afterthought and appendance to a VR rig.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

@Pamela Galli Not performing maintenance on a Mainland sim for 2 days -- or it being so broken it couldn't be fixed for 2 days, something I have trouble believing! -- is indeed cause for concern. Nowhere in this thread did I saw "SL is dying". I noted when I asked the Linden about the possibility that resources were shifting to Project Sansar, she vigorously denied it. And yes, the company wants to keep its "legacy product" going. But maybe it's too hard and they don't have the resources and attention.

Let me think. When your customers can't see your houses -- a thread you had recently -- that may be grounds for YOU to say "SL is dying" if it persists for days and weeks and then soon all your customers have this problem. You're welcome to come to the forums and complain and get sympathy then. 

[Derek Torvalar]

You missed a post by the pendragon where he called Alwin a name claiming Alwin was the reason that SL was dieing and then ragequit.

 

[Pamela Galli]

Yes, it looks like I was replying to Alwin, because the mods deleted Pendragon's post (for profanity) telling Alwin in all caps that he was the reason SL was dying. And that missing post was what I replied to. 

Certainly I would never reply to anything Prokofy said. 

[Tommy Linden]

Hey Prokofy Neva,

Thank you for your concern regarding the Brown region being down, rest assured that we take this sort of matter quite seriously. The Governance team investigated it and it turns out that the region was indeed being griefed rather severely. Unfortunately due to the complex nature of the matter, it did take us longer than even we would have liked to get the region back up again. The good news is though, it has been cleaned up and as you have stated the region is available again.

 

[Qie Niangao]

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Derek Torvalar wrote:

... Alwin was the reason that SL was dieing ... 

---

I don't think we should just dismiss this theory out-of-hand. 

We could test it.

[Derek Torvalar]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

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Derek Torvalar wrote:

... Alwin was the reason that SL was dieing ... 

---

I don't think we should just dismiss this theory out-of-hand. 

We could test it.

---

ROFL

[Prokofy Neva]

@Chin Rey you *do* realize that "two departments independent of each other" are still an *allocation of resources*. The head of LL can put MORE people on Sansar and LESS on SL. It doesn't matter what "standard procedures" are in companies and any "firewall" imagined or real between these projects. There are executive decisions about WHERE to put more resources. And it is more than reasonable to ask whether the legacy SL is being shorted.

@Derek Torvalar Um, I didn't "ragequit". I criticized something *legitimately*. A sim being down for two days is NOT NORMAL and it's *more than fine* to call that out. If you mean someone else, why reply to me?

@Tommy Linden A Linden eventually answered my ticket that this was a "script". A "script" that does things like this is called "a griefing script". There is a relatively new kind of griefing script that rezzes cubes even on land where there is autoreturn, even on Linden land, and even on land where the person is banned or they aren't in the group to which it is set. Obviously that's a big problem for SL. I do hope the Lindens can deprecate/delete/remove completely this script but the fact that it KEEPS appearing makes me wonder.

If it is another script we don't know that. If it is an accident -- sometimes residents make things that get out of their control by accident -- we don't know that.

Therefore it stands to reason that what happened in Brown -- just like what happened in Ravenglass some times ago and also Grace this week was the same thing: this re-rezzing script.

[Derek Torvalar]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

@Chin Rey you *do* realize that "two departments independent of each other" are still an *allocation of resources*. The head of LL can put MORE people on Sansar and LESS on SL. It doesn't matter what "standard procedures" are in companies and any "firewall" imagined or real between these projects. There are executive decisions about WHERE to put more resources. And it is more than reasonable to ask whether the legacy SL is being shorted.

@Derek Torvalar Um, I didn't "ragequit". I criticized something *legitimately*. A sim being down for two days is NOT NORMAL and it's *more than fine* to call that out. If you mean someone else, why reply to me?

@Tommy Linden A Linden eventually answered my ticket that this was a "script". A "script" that does things like this is called "a griefing script". There is a relatively new kind of griefing script that rezzes cubes even on land where there is autoreturn, even on Linden land, and even on land where the person is banned or they aren't in the group to which it is set. Obviously that's a big problem for SL. I do hope the Lindens can deprecate/delete/remove completely this script but the fact that it KEEPS appearing makes me wonder.

If it is another script we don't know that. If it is an accident -- sometimes residents make things that get out of their control by accident -- we don't know that.

Therefore it stands to reason that what happened in Brown -- just like what happened in Ravenglass some times ago and also Grace this week was the same thing: this re-rezzing script.

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I was explaing why you didn't see the "SL is dieing" post.

Pendragon ragequit. That post was deleted.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

 

@Tommy Linden A Linden eventually answered my ticket that this was a "script". A "script" that does things like this is called "a griefing script". There is a relatively new kind of griefing script that rezzes cubes even on land where there is autoreturn, even on Linden land, and even on land where the person is banned or they aren't in the group to which it is set. Obviously that's a big problem for SL.

I do hope the Lindens can deprecate/delete/remove completely this script but the fact that it KEEPS appearing makes me wonder.

---

No need to wonder; they can't. A script is simply a collection of commands in a particular order. As long as those commands exist someone can put them into that order, and the commands themself are individually completely innocent. Trying to "remove" a script would be the equivalent of removing the letters F, C, K and U from the alphabet to try to cut down on profanity.

What they need to do is edit the exploitable actions in the server code the scripts are taking advantage of, without breaking legitimate content. And that's much harder.

[ChinRey]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

@Chin Rey you *do* realize that "two departments independent of each other" are still an *allocation of resources*.

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Yes, I do realize that and I have no doubt that SL is allocated less resources now than before the Sansar development started. But if we look at the actual results, the quality and speed of SL development certainly haven't deteriorated compared to the period shortly before Sansar. If anything they've changed for the better marginally less bad.

In any case, my post was not about resource allocation. It was a reply to an ambigious claim that either meant that LL was deliberately trying to "kill" Second Life to force people over to Sansar or using SL as a testing ground for Sansar development.

[ChinRey]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

 

@Tommy Linden A Linden eventually answered my ticket that this was a "script". A "script" that does things like this is called "a griefing script". There is a relatively new kind of griefing script that rezzes cubes even on land where there is autoreturn, even on Linden land, and even on land where the person is banned or they aren't in the group to which it is set. Obviously that's a big problem for SL.

I do hope the Lindens can deprecate/delete/remove completely this script but the fact that it KEEPS appearing makes me wonder.

---

No need to wonder; they

can't

. A script is simply a collection of commands in a particular order. As long as those commands exist someone can put them into that order, and the commands themself are individually completely innocent. Trying to "remove" a script would be the equivalent of removing the letters F, C, K and U from the alphabet to try to cut down on profanity.

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That is correct of course but there is no function in lsl that in any way affects the building and object entry settings of a parcel. There is a llGetParcelFlags(); function but no corresponding llSetParcelFlags(); Whatever happens, it can't have anything to do with the script itself.