System Upgrades: How do I know?

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

How do I know if the region I have my Home in has already had the system software upgrade?

I know how to find which Server version it is running on. I can get the IP address and domain name for the machine. But, unless I happen to be present when a region goes down, I'm not aware of any source of info which gives me any certainty.

It is on course to be completed today (Friday)?

I was involved in some rather intense and involving activity on Wednesday, when this upgrade process struck. Relocating was not a trivial option. 

 

[Void Singer]

According to Maestro, no way to tell.

(but you could ::cough:: truncate a cap address and read the server header and compare for changes)

[Nalates Urriah]

There are two types of upgrade in process just now. There are the Tuesday and Wednesday upgrades of the simulator software. You can open Help->About and see what version of the simulator your region is running.

Then there is the kernel or operating system upgrades, which are rare. The kernel upgrade is the reason for the extra restarts. You can't know if you are in a region running in a server with the kernel upgrade.

There are racks of servers. The 'concierge' service is a system that watches the servers and detects servers/regions that crash. The concierge system restarts the region in another simulator which is probably in another server. Manually restarted regions are also assigned an available server/simulator by the concierge service.

In the kernel updates all the regions are moved off a server to other servers. Once the server has offloaded the regions, the kernel is updated. It then comes back online and the concierge service assigns the next restarting regions. The next server is unloaded and the process repeats. These restarts are done during non-peak hours.

No one is really sure which simulator or regions are running in which hardware. The Lindens can probably look it up in their system management software. But, the information is completely invisible to users.

So, it is possible to be running on an updated kernel this week and after a region restart, be running on the older kernel.

This week was the first round of kernel updates. No one has a number on how many servers have been updated. I've heard a rought approximation that about 1/3 of the servers were updated. But, I think those are just guesses. In the server group a couple of Lindens said this may take another 10 to 14 days. As the Lindens get more experience it should go faster.

Unless your region is prone to the TimeWarp problem you are unlikely to notice any difference from the kernel upgrade.

You can search the forum for Deploys for the week of... to find out the latest simulator software update information. If you want more information I write a mostly weekly update on what is happening with the servers and tech aspects of SL. My blog link is in the signature.

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

You're the first person I've seen say that this could take three weeks.

[facepalms]

October, the month of horrors and Halloween...

 

[Void Singer]

unfortunately the OS version isn't in the server header, for <region-address>:12046/

Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8c DAV/2

but I had hoped maybe some other updates got paired in that would show on the server. probably not though