Ayesha Askham

Well The Marketplace Maintenance is completed, and FSE and the other chatservers appear to be back on line, but SL is still running on three legs, and guess what? Tomorrow sees Main Server being rolled to the code that has been so troublesome on the RCs this past week...hours of fun ahead, and yes, the Log in servers are still playing up! Yippee this is so much fun....not. :smileyfrustrated: Yes, I know this is all negative, but there is only so much borked innovation that one can take.

So, yet again LL are trying to fix the ailing Marketplace server with another round of Unscheduled Maintenance. But that's not all! Thanks either to server failures or an unannounced bout of maintenance many SL group chats are offline, including Firestorm Support English. Now those dedicated helpers are trying to help other hapless users of the Firestorm viewer inworld via the Phoenix Lounge chat, but how long I wonder before LL find a way to disable that as well? I know it is not likely to be deliberate, but it is a pain. Good grief, this is a great way to spend your weekend...not! ETA Midnight UK time and the Marketplace Maintenance is apparently still ongoing, also the FSE chatserver is still down.

Hi Whirly Yes, it is irritating to have this happen then a few minutes later sail into SL without a hitch. To be honest I feel better knowing that my experience is not isolated! The Log In server problem seems to have started relatively recently, but no-one at The Lab will admit to there being any problem! I do know that one of the servers was swapped from Agni Log ins to Aditi ones to reduce the apparent bottleneck there so whether that has any relevance I don't know. ETA: I do like to repeat myself myself myself.....wibble. As an aside I see that the Mumbai call girls have flooded the site again. "Nurse...the screens!"

Sea Gypsy, If you need to report something to Linden Lab, there are two main ways to do it. 1) Via a support ticket - to to the SL support page and report it via "Contact Support" 2) via a JIRA BUG report if you think it is a serious issue. Search for SL JIRA. Putting comments in here will get responses from other users of SL but rarely will a "Linden", an employee of Linden Lab, see any comment in this forum, since they rarely read anything other than the server forum release thread, and that only will be seen by a select few.

Well Another brief round of "Unscheduled Maintenance" and...no change. This is beginning to look as though the problem is one the Lindens are not willing to properly fix, so my guess is the slow and haphazard server response on Marketplace is a hardware issue and one that they simply will not spend money to fix.

OK it seems to be time for the Log in server to fall over. My viewer sits at "Logging In..." and never moves. Not again? ETA: Must've been the login server having a blonde moment, I managed OK about 10 mins later! Funny, it's happened a fair number of times lately and yet once I'm in I have no issues. :smileyfrustrated: I do know that LL moved over one of the login servers from Agni to Aditi to improve logins there....I wonder if it's connected?

An Update My JIRA BUG-5176 got an answer from Alexa Linden today telling me that it was "apparently" now fixed. I tested it in and out of SL and sure enough, if I waited 30 seconds the page opened. But 30 seconds to get a server response?? So I told Alexa that it might have been improved but it most certainly wasn't fixed!

Just to add my experience. I raised a trouble ticket when MP failed to open over 5 attempts. The response was to tell me to use IE or Firefox instead. I did and guess what? It was just the same! So I raised a Bug report BUG-5176. No acknowledgement yet....ah well. Oh, it's widespread and they DO know about it...now, as to fixing it.......

All FWIW the packet-loss issue and high latency issue seems to have disappeared today so far, so maybe some network engineers were working on one of the servers between the UK and SL. The high bandwidth issue on entering a sim still occurs, and I am increasingly sure that it is texture-update data from the sim to the client that is causing it. Sim-crossing is not great but is what I would call acceptable in the face of what is happening. Yes they HAVE been better last year, but not for long.

Eric Yes, I have noticed it a few times in preceding days but moreso in the last 24hours. Now I had put it down to yet another glitch at Above.net's servers, which, considering the current dreadful weather on both the US East Coast and the European West Coast seemed not surprising. It might also indicate that the servers are sending a lot more data to the client on arrival at a sim, possibly an artefact of some code-changes to do with the much talked-about "Interest List". Since it seems unrelated to draw-distance, I am unsure of the relevance. In short, I don't know but I see this issue as well! Out of curiosity are you connecting to SL from Mainland USA or overseas? ETA: I also ought to point out that I use the Firestorm client, which probably does not have some of the http tweaks that the latest Linden Viewers have and perhaps in that respect the communication is not optimal.

Just adding my take on this. Yes, the Marketplace and search are painfully slow at the moment. As to LL not caring, with regard to Marketplace, I would think they DO care since they get a cut of all sales on there (I think it is 5%), so they'd be cutting their own throats if they didn't fix something that would markedly affect their income That said, I doubt if much will be done until Merchants post on the Commerce Forum about the issue, at which point we can expect some platitudes from Commerce Team Linden and maybe some action. As to search....well my guess is that it is sourced from the same wobbling server so it might just be fixed at the same time....I just won't be holding my breath.

RESOLVED] Unscheduled Database MaintenancePosted by Status Desk on February 8th, 2014 at 03:20 pm PST [RESOLVED 6:02 PM, 7 February 2014] Database maintenance has been completed at this time. [POSTED 2:20 PM PST, 08 February 2014] We are undergoing unscheduled database maintenance. During this time, some services including the Marketplace may be inaccessible, and some inworld services may be slow to respond. This maintenance may also disrupt transactions. Please refrain from transacting with L$ or rezzing valuable (no-copy) items until the all-clear is given. Please keep an eye on this blog for further updates. We should not complain about poor reaction times now:It would seem that Maintenance is now finished before it even starts! :smileytongue:

Gawd had as much trouble getting on here as into SL proper! Ahem! I recall that a little known Native American tribe used to smash up the bones of an animal and scatter them, the pattern telling them what the future held in store. Perhaps Linden Staff do something similar with SL at the weekends now, to show them which new software will be successful on the RC channels? :smileytongue:

Interesting, Wolf. I've been tryiong to get onto SL for about an hour, with no luck and even getting the account to respond on the website seemed very slow. I rebooted my computer and modem, but to no effect. Looks like SL is out of our reach for tonight.

Well it looks like I'm in the barrel as well now. My Viewer sits a Logging in.... and nothing happens. Great. I wonder what broke this time?

Cincia It is about time you packed in this anti-TPV attitude. It is becoming tiresome and in this particular case it is completely inaccurate; the inventory issues are occurring to users on LL viewers every bit as much as on TPVs. As is pointed out in other posts on this thread, Scheduled Maintenance is no bad thing, but Unscheduled Maintenance on a weekend is NEVER good and simply deepens my concern that a fundamental asset server system within SL is failing. At the moment the Maintenance that LL keep performing on the Inventory database seems akin to firefighters attempting to extinguish a coal-seam fire by putting out surface fires when they appear. It is also about as effective.

I notice that there is now an "Unscheduled Inventory Database Maintenance" operation going, started last SL night and still apparently in progress. This is getting to be so regular that one could set one's SL clock by it...if, of course, the asset server could find it and would allow you to rez it!

It seems a bit pointless to add this, but LL are going to be doing another round of Scheduled Inventory Database Maintenance on Monday, and if what I have managed to understand so far is anything to go by, another tranche of accounts will be corrected. It may well be that the issue is not improved until the Rolling Restarts this week since changes have to be made on the sim servers as well (apparently). Now none of this is much comfort to accounts blighted by this inventory issue...my partner had to wait 20 minutes for the asset server to find the item of inventory she requested today (and no, it wasn't her PC, modem or ISP, we know the ropes, please do not give us any MORE platitudes). Quite when LL will sort this issue out, if ever, remains to be seen.

Aeromia and everyone It is sad to realise that, no matter how we, the users, feel about SecondLife, The Senior managers and Board of Linden Lab do not share our conception. They quite simply do not consider anything that is associated with our accounts, be it inventory or monetary assets, to be truly ours. The Terms of Service state it baldly and nothing we say will alter that. I know, I was told that long ago. That Linden Lab staff care about us is also undeniable but they, like us are bound by the terms of their contracts to a policy that in any other walk of life would be commercial suicide. The Linden Lab model of customer service is not used in any other system that I know of and while the American attitude of, "you have no rights because we say you don't" may not irk some, it irritates the life out of me. While internal politics occupy the Board I very much doubt that anything will change for the better - we must just hope that the aims of the senior operations managers at LL have the same overall emphasis as ours. If they don't it may be a very bumpy 2014.

Nalates The Lab's "admitting to issues" is "out of touch with reality"....really? No. Simply that if this issue is explainable, they should explain it and not just to those whose RL committments allow them to get to office hours or Server Group meetings. Yes, OK, it would be out of keeping with their general disinclination to tells us about things if they aren't "shiny and new". As far as it being OK once regions are restarted after Maintenance, this simply is not true. As far as JIRA submissions are concerned I am sick and tired of submitting BUG reports with reproducible data only to have them either closed as duplicates or discounted unless I use the Linden Viewer. That there are significant and persistent communication issues between the sim-servers and the central asset servers is an utter no-brainer. LL should not sweep this under the carpet. Some of us would respect them more if now and again they would actually be straightforward and honest with the userbase. Perhaps I also ought to add that I and many others are grateful to both you and Inara Pey for disseminating information, in your respective blogs, to those of us that cannot attend Lab meetings. I think our disparate attitudes to what we consider is right and proper for Linden Lab to do are products of our different cultures.

These error messages have been occurring for several residents to my certain knowledge for several weeks now. Linden Lab have instigated several bouts of "Inventory Database" and "Inventory Server" maintenance recently but the plain truth is that the problem is not getting any better. I have had sporadic "failed to create requested inventory" "inventory server failed to respond in a timely manner" and "cannot derez due to inventory error" messages since well before Christmas and others using the Linden default viewer have had the same. I also find that some items are frequently superglued to my avatar whereas others drop off after teleports on a regualr basis. Relogs usually correct the isssue but there is a commmunication breakdown somewhere. Whether or not The Lab will ever admit that either the inventory database has corrupted or that the hardware is failing I do not know, but I DO know that this issue is in need of urgent attention.

I do not know whether what I have experienced is related but at about 8:30am SLT today, most music streams to our sim failed. They appeared to run but I heard no sound. All other SL sounds were unaffected. My partner observed the same phenomenon, so it was not my hardware or software, no amount of updating of Flash Player made any difference. Contact with one internet radio company, DI.fm, suggested that all Shoutcast relays would become inoperable over the next few days, but no reason was given. I can only surmise that the end of free streaming is here. As to what impact, if any, this will have on SL I do not know. I did find that a private stream hosted by my partner played normally. ETA at 4pm SLT: No idea why but the problem vanished this UK evening. All streams seem to be audible again. It must have been a hardware glitch, I suppose, probably never find out why! I wonder why only myself and my partner, who lives miles away from me in RL had the same issue.

Maestro While it may still be that many residents do not believe what they are told by Lindens in this forum, it is with great pleasure that some of us see your willingness to communicate with us. Thankyou.

I suppose that the decision not to roll this week was also related to the repeated need for Inventory Server Maintenance? This is becoming an almost daily occurrence!

No, you are right Dari, nothing has been said so far, but given that the Google calendar was automated (and it is more often the case that there are entries slated when the rolls are cancelled) I am surprised that there are no entries for this week, given that next week's are there. Still, all will be revealed shortly, I guess!