[What's up with the Beta Grid?]

As part of the move to the cloud, we changed how we wall off grids from each other. To use a material science example, instead of using reinforced brick we're now using tungsten carbide, which is extremely hard to cut through even intentionally. This means getting data from one grid to another is almost impossible; we're spending the time making sure that:

• Data only goes from Agni to Aditi, never the other way around
• Only the specific data we want to go from Agni to Aditi is transferred, only when we want it, for the very specific reason of synchronizing active Beta accounts
• The synchronization mechanism will work both for accounts that already exist on Aditi, as well as accounts that have never been synchronized before

The good news is we are getting there. We have a prototype working and anticipate tests with Linden owned accounts will start soon.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-07-19]

Second Life Server

There are no updates to Second Life Server this week.

Second Life RC Updates

This week we'll be restarting all RC regions to refresh the underlying cloud hosts which are running our simulators. Because of limitations in how we deploy our simulator code, this will show as an update to version 2021-07-16.561609. There are no changes in this version, however we will be making some additional changes to approximately 1/3 of the machines running RC servers which we believe may improve performance in some situations.

On Region Restarts

As mentioned in some of our recent deploy plans we've been investigating the effectiveness of region restarts at the ten day limit. We believe some of the issues Residents are encountering with regions that have long uptimes are due to issues at the machine level, not the simulator level. Our instance refresh for Second Life RC channels this week is an attempt to gather data as to whether this is correct or not.

[Sim sizes need to change!!!!]

On 6/26/2021 at 5:31 PM, Adam Huntsman said:

A homestead and full sim need to change to the size of the ark evolved map with a height of 4000. Paying 125 a month or 350 a month is a lot of money for a small private island. I think second life needs a major update to keep up with the times. I think second life can be updated. Instead of a premier house maybe second life should consider the old style homestead and full sims being the new premier home. While make a new type of full sim the size of ark evolved. Food for thought. That would get millions of people to come on second life.

As mentioned on a recent Lab Gab, we have looked at changing the size of regions in Second Life, and even made a prototype, but it was extremely difficult to even get that far because the assumption that a region is exactly 256m by 256m is baked into many, many places in Second Life, both in the simulator and services that support it. You couldn't cross regions anymore, you couldn't manage parcel settings, you couldn't modify terrain properly, and many other issues. I'm not saying it could never happen, but it would be a very large initiative.

[(Lack of) Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-07-12]

Second Life Server:

No Second Life Server rolls this week.

Second Life RC:

No RC roll this week.

On Region Restarts:

We believe the last round of restarts we did for Second Life Server and Release Candidate channels should have enabled our Grid Poking Bot to start poking regions that have more than 10 days of uptime again, but we'll be watching this coming week, and will continue to investigate if regions with 10+ days of uptime aren't restarted as planned.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-06-28]

18 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Curious why code in that area even changed to being with. 🤔

We were making some changes to ensure we get fresh data rather than cached data from internal services when we need it, and that code happens to be adjacent to the "send custom headers" code.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-06-28]

Second Life Server:

No roll for Second Life Server this week.

Second Life RC:

We'll be deploying a new version to all RCs this week, version 2021-06-23.560819, which will include several internal fixes as well as implementing BUG-202864 and a fix for BUG-230881 which caused last week's rollback.

On Region Restarts:

We've seen some reports that automatic restarts aren't happening as planned and are investigating.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-06-21]

Second Life Server:

No roll for Second Life Server this week.

Second Life RC:

We'll be deploying a new version to all RCs this week, tentatively version 2020-06-16.560618, which will include several internal fixes as well as implementing BUG-202864. Release notes link coming later.

On Region Restarts:

We'll be restarting regions that have more than 10 days uptime during the usual Second Life Server roll window of 03:00-11:00 PDT.

[(Lack of) Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-06-14]

No rolls are planned for Agni simulators this week (other than preparing our event hosts for SL18B, woohoo!). We'll be restarting regions that have been up for more than 10 days during the regularly scheduled roll periods of Tuesday from 03:00* to 11:00 Pacific, and Wednesday from 07:00 to 10:30 Pacific.

 

* Grid Poking Bot hasn't been informed that it gets to sleep in an extra hour yet. We figure since it isn't programmed to complain it won't mind waiting a week.

[The Rolling Restarts Mushroom Farm]

Usually I just read these topics, but I wanted to take a moment to share that:

• Losing Ebbe last week absolutely had an impact on everyone here at the Lab. My coworkers and I appreciate the empathy and sympathy you all have shown ♥️
   
• I just got back from two weeks away yesterday and hadn't gotten back into the groove 100% yet. As soon as someone poked me this morning though I made sure to get a deploy plan up ASAP, and you have my apologies for the delay

And while I'm here I want to talk about positives for a moment:

• You may have noticed I listed the roll window as starting an hour later. That's intentional! We're letting our engineers sleep in a bit later for rolls, permanently! And it's because...
   
• We've made so many improvements to the roll process and tools over the last six months that we are now rolling in under half the time we needed for the same number of regions in the colo. This means shutdowns and startups are both faster so even if we start a bit later we'll still finish well before the 11 AM Pacific end time. And this is just one of a large set of improvements we're making to Second Life behind the scenes, and we have no plans to stop!

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-06-07]

Second Life Server:

The main channel will get the server update that went to the RC channels last week:

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2021-05-25.560108.html

Tuesday 2021-06-08 04:00-11:00 PDT

Second Life RC:

No RC roll this week.

On Region Restarts:

We'll be restarting regions that have more than 10 days uptime during the usual RC roll window of 07:00-10:30 PDT.

[Discussion: Use Cases for llOpenFloater()]

I've added an update to the initial post, but the very short version is we're not going to allow access to this function for Resident run experiences based on the concerns you all have raised.

[Discussion: Use Cases for llOpenFloater()]

Hello everyone! This week we're putting out a simulator which allows certain experiences everyone is part of - like the experiences that make Portal Park work - to tell a viewer (which we're still working on) to open a browser floater. We've initially limited this LSL function so that only very trusted experiences will be able to even send the message to your viewer, but we anticipate that the scripting community will have ideas around how they could utilize this feature; we're looking forward to hearing what you think!

 

Edit: Hey everyone, just wanted to give you an update after reading your feedback here and in the LSL Scripting Forum, as well as clarify a couple of misconceptions. Currently, the way the llOpenFloater() LSL function is implemented the only class of experiences that are allowed to invoke this function are Linden Owned and Operated Experiences which always function for everyone.

The only thing we have planned with this new LSL function is creating an improved New User Experience. Given the legitimate concerns the community has raised, we don’t foresee opening up the usage of this LSL function to all Experience owners in the future. In addition, we are taking the following actions:
* In a future release, all invocations of llOpenFloater will fail unless the Experience associated with the invoking script both functions for everyone and is Grid Scope. This further limits the pool of possible scripts that could invoke this function.

* Logging a report with Linden Lab any time llOpenFloater is used for accessing any URL besides New User Experience (internally called “Guidebook”) URLs.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-05-10]

Second Life Server:

No updates for regions that were updated to version 2021-04-21.558586 last week.

Second Life RC:

After reading your feedback regarding llOpenFloater it’s clear we need to take another week to ensure that the only way this feature can or will be used is for New User Experience guidance. We’ll have an updated build and more details next week, thanks for your patience!

On Region Restarts:

Because we've had deploys for the last two weeks, we don't anticipate any additional rolling restarts needing for this week, but if we find any regions that have been up for more than 10 days we'll be sure to restart them.

[Deploy Plan for the week of 2021-04-26]

13 hours ago, Miller Thor said:

@Maestro Linden Unfortunately, as usually only the description internal fixes. What do they contain, please?

When we don't provide further details about internal fixes you can reasonably assume that the reason is one of:

• The system or systems changed were entirely internal, or
• The system or systems changed were Resident facing, but contain components that are not publicly discussed, or
• The changes made involved issues of security or stability which if discussed could give malicious attackers insight into how to attack Second Life

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-03-29]

Second Life Server:

No roll for Second Life Server, as we had to roll back our RC last Friday.

Second Life RC:

All RC channels will be getting the same new build.

(Release notes link TBD for version 2021-03-25.557505)

This release contains internal fixes.

Wednesday 2021-03-31 07:00-10:30 PDT

No roll for Second Life RC Regions, we found a last minute bug that halted release.

On Region Restarts:

All regions should have less than 10 days uptime this week, so no rolling restarts should be necessary.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-03-15]

Second Life Server:

No Roll

Second Life RC:

Version 556847 will be deployed to all RCs

Release Notes can be found at https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2021-03-11.556847.html

Wednesday 2021-03-17 07:00-10:30 PDT

On Region Restarts:

All regions should have been restarted within the last 10 days, so we don't anticipate any rolling restarts other than the RC version change this week.

[Deploy for the week of 2020-03-01]

We do have a small number of regions still running 556138, this is intentional for testing purposes. All changes in 556138 are included in 556225.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-02-22]

Second Life Server:

No Roll

Second Life RC:

Version 2021-02-17.556138 will be deployed to RC Oranges (a group of simulators smaller than what used to be called RC BlueSteel) to test a different method of getting performance improvements as we continue to monitor Apples after some issues with data collection prevented us from being able to move forward confidently to all RCs.

 

Version 2021-02-17.556138 (or a rebuilt version of it, final build number TBD) will be deployed to all RCs. This version is a hybrid of what was on the Apples channel last week (Oranges did not show improvements in the areas we were monitoring and has been retired) as well as some additional changes to bring performance optimizations to homesteads and openspaces.

Patch notes:

Release Notes

• Internal fixes aimed at optimizing performance

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2021-02-17.556138.html

Scheduled Wednesday 2021-02-25 08:00-9:30 PST

Update @ 2021-02-23 18:20 SLT: the pending Second Life RC roll for Wednesday has been cancelled.

Update @ 2021-02-24 14:30 SLT: we're letting Apples take another week while we re-evaluate going to all RCs with it, and are re-tooling Oranges in the meantime. There should be less downtime than usual with the 2021-02-25 Oranges deploy.

On Region Restarts:

We'll be restarting Second Life Server regions that have been up for more than 10 days on Tuesday, February 23 between 03:00 and 11:00 PST.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-02-15]

Second Life Server:

No Roll

Second Life RC:

Version 2021-02-05.555747 to each of two channels called Apples and Oranges. This version has been quietly on Agni for the last week on a single host in a couple of different configurations; it has been successful enough we're now moving two of the configurations to more hosts to gather additional data as to whether changes we made to optimize performance are broadly successful.

Patch notes:

Release Notes

• Internal fixes aimed at optimizing performance

Scheduled Wednesday 2021-02-17 07:00-10:30 PST

On Region Restarts:

Check back soon!

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-02-01]

Second Life Server:

No Roll

Second Life RC:

Version 2021-02-01.555570

Patch notes:

Release Notes

• Internal fixes

Resolved Issues

• BUG-228783 llSitOnLink() is not generating Notifications nor logs in Events in the viewer.
• BUG-8265 CONTROL_ML_LBUTTON and CONTROL_LBUTTON not working when llTakeControls called in the experience_permissions event
  • Also known as BUG-230131
• SL-14802 Some notifications can be very spammy
  • We added additional logging from the simulator to the viewer for experience permissions, but some of those calls can happen quite often! We only send them every few seconds now. Your viewer will surely appreciate it

New Features

• BUG-230026 Extended error return for llHTTPRequest
  • Documentation on the new extended error return data can be found here

Scheduled Wednesday 2021-01-27 07:00-10:30 PST

On Region Restarts:

RCs will, of course, be restarted this week. We're also expecting to restart Second Life Server regions a few at a time, because we weren't able to do our expected roll to the main channel due to BUG-230131.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-01-25]

Second Life Server:

No Roll

Second Life RC:

Version 2021-01-19.555189

Patch notes:

Release Notes

• Internal fixes

Resolved Issues

• BUG-228783 llSitOnLink() is not generating Notifications nor logs in Events in the viewer.

New Features

• BUG-230026 Extended error return for llHTTPRequest
  • Documentation on the new extended error return data can be found here

Scheduled Wednesday 2021-01-27 07:00-10:30 PST

On Region Restarts:

With our RC release on Wednesday everything should be restarted more recently than 2 weeks until next week.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2021-01-11]

Second Life Server

No roll this week

Second Life RCs:

2021-01-08.554811

Patch notes:

Release Notes

• Miscellaneous EEP Fixes
• Logging changes for Routed to Wrong Region error

Resolved Issues

• SL-14635 Additional simulator logging for "Routed to wrong region" error
• BUG-229079 [EEP] Denisity multiplier does not allow full range of settings to be saved/loaded
• BUG-226259 [EEP] Please add missing components to llSetAgentEnvironment().

Scheduled Wednesday 2021-01-13 07:00-10:30 PST

On Region Restarts:

We don't anticipate a need for rolling restarts this week after our roll last Friday. Regular rolling restarts should resume approximately 2021-01-19 for regions on Second Life Server that have not been restarted in 10 days or more, and 2021-01-20 for Second Life RCs.

 

[Deploy plan for 2021-01-08]

3 minutes ago, Miller Thor said:

@Grumpity Linden I hope we get the Release Notes soon so we can see what's new or changed.

Literally nothing, it's the exact same build, we're just unable to re-roll the same version number due to technical constraints (one more problem we're aiming to fix soon!)

[Deploy to Main Server on Tuesday 15th]

15 hours ago, Aishagain said:

Well so there wil be a roll to Main Server on Tuesday.  Good.  Perhaps this time you will remember to roll Woods of Heaven!  We were left out of Friday's remedial roll to 553685, and Support simply told me that we had to wait for the next roll to get the region back to normal.  Fortunately the wait has not been a long one.

Colour me confused but while the post header on the GSP states the rolls are to the Main Second Life server, the body text says that the RC channels are to be rolled as well.  Which is correct?

We intentionally didn't roll a fraction of the Magnum and Second Life Server hosts last Friday to minimize the disruption to the grid. Everything that we didn't roll on Friday should be updated today. And that should conclude the rolls for this week, but we do have a few more end of year changes we're working on, so watch this forum and the grid status blog for information on any additional rolls.

[Deploy Plan for the Week of 2020-12-07 (Updated 2020-12-09 16:30 PST)]

Update @ 2020-12-11 11:45 PST : added plans for Friday rolls.

 

We're continuing our daily rolls this week as we get closer to the finish line of having uplifted simulators ready for an all-uplifted future.

Monday:

Morning:

Second Life Server (Main Channel) will restart between 6:00 AM and 12:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2020-12-01.553168.html

Tuesday:

Morning:

Second Life RC channels will restart in the morning, 6 AM - 9:30 AM Pacific Standard Time.

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2020-12-02.553176.html

Wednesday:

Morning:

Second Life Server (Main Channel) will restart between 6:00 AM and 12:00 PM Pacific Standard Time.

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2020-12-02.553176.html

 

Thursday:

Morning:

Two of the Second Life RC channels (RC BlueSteel and RC LeTigre) will restart between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time.

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2020-12-09.553685.html

Friday:

Afternoon:

The un-updated Second Life RC channel (RC Magnum) will restart between 12:30 PM and 2:30 PM Pacific Standard Time.

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2020-12-09.553685.html

After the RC channel is done updating, we will begin updating the Second Life Server (i.e. Main Channel) regions with the same code after a brief pause.

On Region Restarts:

There will be a lot of them this week too! We did get some more testing done on uplifted Grid Poking Bot, but found a couple of issues that need more attention.