JoyofRLC Acker

Oskar - with a lot of discussion going on in Sailing chat groups rt now. Id really like to know if the restarts are finished. A lot of us are trying to take stock of the curent state of sailing today before the OH this afternoon.

Oskar - thanks for the heads up. Should that be posted on the Grid status? I suspect a lot pf ppl think its the normal wednesday restarts going on right now?

Lets keep our fingers crossed. My perception was last week things were great afer the roll-out (ie on Tuesday afternoon) and then went down hill over the next day or 3.

Good advice, I suspect the good ones do alot that way already (I know Sailors Coves does for one). But to an extent they are dependant on LL.

Personally i think its project management and QA (or lack thereof), Im quite sure they relase stuff that has not been adequatley tested. Thats the root cause. The current mess is just one symptom. They fix these problems but if they stay with the curent modus operandi they will continue releasing fresh bugs avery week. After Mesh there will be 3-D. (Im joking. Aren't I?).

Ok a silly question .... is this the first general restarts since the OS upgrade? (I ask cos of the comment about servers not shutting propoerly, to this non tech person sounds like that could be OS related).

Suddenly, its all making sense.

PS. Can someone please explain why my posts seem to ignore newlines - ie come up as one paragpaph? Its not how I type them!

I agree entirely. Id also like to know where the sim is that has hardly ever crashed or howevver Peggy expressed it. Im in no way getting at her opinion, it just seems her SL experience is a lot better than mine (and my sailing friends). Nalates has a good web site, which Ive just discovered that is very informative. But we shouldnt have to rely on provate individuals or go hunting around for basic information of the kind you mention, We need more short, but informative and helpful explanations like Oskars up fornt on the grid status page. ... THE OTHER IMPORTANT THING IS --- MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, THINGS ARE SETTLING DOWN. WE HAD SOME EXCELLENT RACING YESTERDAY AFTERNOON AFTER THE RESTARTS FINISHED. (admitedly in Sailors Cove not in Linden water). IF this is true - we should all give thanks; were quick enough to criticose we should be equaly quick to say THANK you. (I do so hope Im not going to regret saying that).

Excellent summary Oskar and very helpful. Thank you.

Yes I am venting a bit as I said due SL being unusable this morning, I think I said that. Dont think its just me though ... the whole sailing community is pretty pissed off at the moment and Im guessing its not just our commuinity... Paggy is right I can jump off. And perhaps thats what we all need to do. Not sure what that does to LL business plan. And probably correct that I have no "rights" to LL plans for the grid. I probably have no "rights" either for delivery of acceptable service levels, no "rights" for explanations or apologies when service is below par. Heres a rhetoricla question: Does LL actually know what % complete they are at on this particular round of upgrades? If they do, why can it not be shared? If they don't ... I guess I have no "right" to comment on that.

Oh yes, its Beta. Silly me. Can anyone direct me to bank where I can get Beta Dollars (sorry just in a ratty mood this morning after my attempt to run some yacht races this morning).

Oh Im sorry Peggy, I didnt realise it was my fault for rushing out buy a new puter. So sorry. I guess I missed the email telling me to go shopping. Seriously, you do raise quite an interesting point. Keeping the hardware and software in balance. Seems to me in practice the two sort of leapfrog each other, However it is one thing to say - to get these shiny new features you need new hardware. That gives me the choice of saying "no, thank you". (Case in point iOS 5 and iPhone 3GS ... it seems to use iOS5 you really need iPhone 4 if you dont want lag. IF I should decide to use, say, iCLoud, I can make a decision to spend the money. Meanwhile, Apple gives the choice of continuing to use my existing phone and software without disruption) It is quite another to say "to continue doing what you have been doing just fine ... you now need ujpgrade hardware:. I think in the past when there have been these big upheavals weve known what it was for. You have suggested that in fact OS upgraddes means server upgraded. But thise have been sxchedule on a regular basis and (if we go look) we can find out whats going on. I dont have the data but Im pretty sure most sims are being hit repeatedly these last couple of weeks.

Thanks Ayesha. [sidebar : I guess Im not 'almost everyone' (this has been said before and not in a kind way lol) - as , in fact I do NOT see the need for WEEKLY upgrades, and in fact consider that its a rather hazardous modus operandi. Apart from anything else that many updates to such a complex environment means that adequate testing is impossible. The recent fracas with the 'security fix' that broke content illustrates the point I think. Whatever happened to "Get it right the first time"? any way I digress...] One critical quality in any 'expert' / professional is the ability to provide simple explanations of what they are doing. If they cant, be very very careful as it most likely means they dont fully understand themsleves. (For a case study look at the Financial Industry over the last couple of decades; the fit hit the shan in the last couple of years but trouble has been brewing for a while]

Ayesha - you made a comment about how this is different form normal server upgrades as if you know what it is that they are in fact doing. As Ive said elsewhere, "OS upgrade" is really quite vague. Can you elaborate? I see also mention of sims being redistributed to different servers. Im probably venturing where I shouldnt as Im not technical; but if that is part of whats happening surely that should have been announced in the status notes. That would be likely to have significant impact (good or bad) on performance for the affected sims.

Yes, the lack of explanation is what bothers me. "Critical OS upgrade" to me means something like moving off Windows ME (joke - I hope) - which is quite different from upgrading the server code. They have specifically gone outside their normal roll out restart cycle. Again without really saying why. As usual they either dont understand the kinds of things people do inworld, or dont care. or both. Sailing, for example, has become well nigh impossible. (To the person who alleges they never experience a sim going down, you should have been in Sailors Cove half an hour ago with TD off the meter, sims coming and going - we had to abandon our race). Question: Is there any channel of communication that LL actually listens to? Perhaps we should file a JIRA EACH time a sim crashes.

I think the last couple of weeks have been quite different. First, LL has been utterly vague as to the changes they are making. "Critical OS upgrades" ... afik OS means operating system (eg windows) not the server code. But they really havent explained, as far as I can tell. They have not done their usual trumpeting of big leaps forward. They HAVE warned us of perpetual restarts for several weeks, which is different from their normal weekly scheduled rollouts and restarts which how they normally release new bugs. Does ANYBODY know whats really going. Im a sailor and conditions have become well nigh impossible. But of course we have to keep paying our tiers etc.

VS: I understand your philosophy: dont just rant but diagnose. However its hard to do that there are so many variables. To be clear, it is happening far too often these days that a race has to be abandoned because over half the boats crash. Im pretty sure that involves several differnt hardware and software configurations. Part of the problem though is that we lack data - perhpas LL has it when they get crash logs? My subjective impression for sailing is that 90% of sim corssings are good, porbably smootehre than they used to be - rubber banding is happening less; but still some submariing etc. The problem is the 10% ... to complete a race successfully requrie zero crashes - bottom line is that the chances of successfully completing a 45 minute race seem to be a lot less than they were last year. Yesterday I was running races in Blake. 1st Lap: 0 / 7 boats survived (a 35 miinute course approx). 2 boats rerezzed and completed. 2nd Lap: 4 / 4 boats survived but quite a few rough crossings in my case at least. I really have to question if the "policy" of perpetual roll-outs and continual bug fixes is wise. Two obvious concerns spring to mind: - a HUGE burden on testing, the amount of resource required to thoroughly test each release every week, repeating the same old test proceduires week after week - havng a chequerboard grid of different sim versions cant help. seems these days those annoying orange "diffeent sim version" pop ups are popping up all the time SURELY and ares like Blake, or Big Sea, or significant prtions of private estates shold be on the same server version?