Second Life Grid Status Reports

Hi Everybody!!

In our effort to provide the highest quality Second Life experience possible we must occasionally make sure we are addressing the correct issues. It has come to our attention that we may be spending to much time and resources on a product no longer relevant to our residents.

Today we’d like to let you know we’re seriously considering whether Linden Lab should continue supporting Windows 2000. Our tracking shows that very few of you, about 1/10th of 1 percent of all of you that have logged in within the past two months, are still using Windows 2000 when logging into Second Life. That is approximately 2,000 out of 1,407,581 residents who have logged in to Second Life within the past 60 days.

We’d like to let the Linden engineers stop working on supporting an operating system released in 2000, and instead move on to other work which will benefit a much larger group of Residents.

If we do stop supporting that version of the OS, it would not be until 60 days from now, to make sure there is plenty of time for the news to spread.

To briefly review the last eight years of Windows OS: Windows 2000, was first released in February 2000, and updated with SP4 Rollup 1 v2 in 2005. Microsoft has followed Win2k with two more recent versions of the OS, Windows XP which was released in October 2001 and Windows Vista released in January 2007 and updated February 2008.

What would it mean to “stop support”? Eventually we would stop developing for the SDK (software development kit ) of that operating system, and we would also stop doing QA testing on Win2k. Also our support team would no longer be able to offer solutions to every issue related to or caused by the support of Windows 2000 ceasing.

What would you notice? If you are one of the few logging in with that OS, you would still be able to do so the day we stop supporting it for some time. Exactly how long we couldn’t guarantee, because we would no longer be testing and developing to make sure it does work.

What say you citizens? Thumbs up?  Thumbs down? Please direct any comments to this forum thread. (Lindens will be reading your comments and responding periodically over the next few days.)

[UPDATE 8:37 pm PST] XML-RPC services are restored.

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XML-RPC services in world are temporarily disrupted. Engineers are already repairing the process, and service should return very shortly.

[RESOLVED 5:08pm PDT] - The transaction provider is back online and all services should be fully restored.

[UPDATE 3:30pm Pacific] Our transaction service provider remains offline due to a service outage. They will continue their efforts until service is restored. We will continue to post status reports as we receive them.

We’re currently unable to process some credit and debit cards for LindeX buys. In addition, attempts to update your account information at the Website with a credit or debit card will not succeed at this time.

We’re working with our vendor to correct the processing of credit and debit cards as quickly as possible.

[RESOLVED 13:30] The database issues have been dealt with. Inworld services and logins have been restored, and the support portal is once again functioning.

There is an issue with the central database causing a number of inworld and website issues for residents. Some residents will experience issues with search, teleporting and transactions, and will be unable to log into the support portal, http://secondlife.com/support. Additionally, some residents will not be able to log in to Second Life at all. Ops is working on the problem, but until fixed, please refrain from making purchases or rezzing no-copy items. We will update this post with further information as it becomes available.

A number of residents are experiencing PayPal transaction failures.  We’re investigating and we’ll update when we have additional information.

Resolved at 10:45PM Pacific Work on the inventory server cluster is complete!  Some residents may need to clear Second Life’s cache (Edit > Preferences > Network > Clear Cache) and relog.  — Frontier

[9:24 pm Pacific]  Ops is addressing a disruption within the inventory server cluster.  Until the repair is completed, some residents will find themselves unable to retrieve inventory or to begin a new viewer session. We’ll keep you posted.

[UPDATE 12:30pm Pacific] Logins are open and in-world services are restored.

[UPDATE 12:22 pm Pacific] Logins are temporarily closed.

[UPDATE 12:18pm Pacific] Some residents are unable to login.

Operations is diagnosing current reports of stale L$ transactions and TPs timing out. Please refrain from operating on valuable assets until an ALL-CLEAR is given. We’ll keep you posted.

[RESOLVED] Vivox has fixed the issue and voice is once again working.

There is an issue which is affecting inworld voice chat. Operations is working to diagnose the problem. Please monitor this post for further information as it becomes available.

[RESOLVED 11:31 PM Pacific] Some residents also reported brief troubles with TPs. It looks like a regional router on the US West Coast hiccuped. Both residents and support staff are able to access the support portal now.

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Some residents are getting a connection timeout on the support portal. We’re investigating.

[RESOLVED 22:32] The issue has been corrected and the affected regions are now accessible.

500 regions are currenty unavailable due to a networking issue. Ops is aware of the problem and is working to correct it. Please monitor this post for updates as they become available.