Second Life Grid Status Reports

Second Life 1.22 Release Candidate (RC1) Viewer is now available which addresses the following issue:

• VWR-10619: Crash when starting a group IM from contacts window ( Crash in LLTextEditor::findHTML )

We’re working on the next iteration of the 1.22 Viewer which will include additional fixes.

Please check out the Full release notes for a complete list of issues addressed in 1.22. Be sure to report new issues in the Issue Tracker and set the “Affects Version/s” to “1.22 Release Candidate”.

We are releasing the first iteration of the new Viewer 1.22 Release Candidate (RC0). Help us to identify new bugs and try out the new features before it becomes an official download for Second Life! Participating in the Release Candidate viewers is completely optional. You may install this viewer side-by-side with the official viewer that you normally use.

This viewer is a maintenance release. There are over 60 fixes that solve bugs from previous versions of Second Life. Some of these are small improvements that make existing features work more smoothly (like Beacons and Snapshots). Some fixes improve glitches in the rendering of avatars.

For a complete list, please check out the Full release notes.

NOTE: Because of a number of known bugs in this early candidate, we have made the RC0 viewer an optional upgrade from the previous Release Candidate. You can choose to wait for RC1 before upgrading your Release Candidate.

Still, we do need your help to find crash cases and other feedback! Please visit the Test Viewers page to download the 1.22 RC0 viewer at your convenience.

You can discuss the release of this new Release Candidate here in the SL Forums.

Be sure to report new issues in the Issue Tracker and set the “Affects Version/s” to “1.22 Release Candidate”.

The “Second Life Beta Server” channel of Aditi, the Preview Grid now has Server Version 1.25.0. This is the server release that is planned to be deployed to the main Second Life environment starting a week from now (although the actual deploy times have yet to be finalized). Release notes for this version can be found on this page on the Second Life Wiki.

For more information about beta testing upcoming server releases in general, please see this post on the main blog. If you are interested in verifying that your objects or scripts will work with the new version, if you want to verify that a fix or new feature is working properly, or if you are interested in getting a look at the next version, please drop by and check things out.

There is a thread in the Second Life forum for discussing beta testing of this upcoming server release. There is also a thread for general discussion of server release beta testing.

As your login screen may have already told you, an optional viewer upgrade is available today. Announcing the Second Life 1.21 Viewer!

As many scripters are aware, this 1.21 viewer brings you the ability to compile scripts using Mono. (Learn more about Mono in a video tutorial by Torley Linden.) It also includes new LSL functions for “DetectedTouch” — features that will allow a prim to report where on its surface or texture that it has been clicked. This viewer is also a maintenance release: There are over 150 fixes that solve bugs from previous versions of Second Life. Many of these are small improvements that make existing features work more smoothly (like menus, Inventory offers, IM and Chat, Snapshots, Estate tools, and many more).

There is so much to list, please check out the Full release notes. There is a lot worth reading.

Please visit the Downloads page to download Viewer 1.21.6 — or simply click where your older viewer suggests you to upgrade to the new version.

Note: This viewer upgrade is OPTIONAL. You may still log in to Second Life with your current viewer 1.20.17.

You can discuss the release of this new Viewer here in the SL Forums.

Please of course continue to report new issues in the Issue Tracker and set the “Affects Version/s” to “1.21.” We can only investigate and solve issues that are reported in the Issue Tracker.

Today, we released an important update that improves the security of the Second Life viewer for all Residents. This update eliminates a recently discovered issue, and we’re requiring that all Residents download and install it to ensure that everyone remains secure while using Second Life. You will be prompted to download and install the update when you log-in, or you can get it from the Downloads page.

More details about the improvements included in this update are available below.

Linden Lab has released a Security Update to the Second Life viewer software today to address a potential security issue. This Security Update includes an additional security patch related to the Security Update issued on 26-Sept-2008.

Available for:

Second Life Viewer 1.20.15 / 1.20.16
Second Life Release Candidate Viewer 1.21.4

Description:

We recently updated the Second Life server and viewers to enhance the communications code. All transfer operations are now restricted to files that the user has expressly chosen, and specific directories that the viewer uses for transferring data. For the safety of all Second Life users, we are releasing this updated viewer to all Residents.

Potential vulnerabilities had been identified in those message communications directed at a Second Life viewer over the previous protocol. By taking advantage of this vulnerability, while extremely difficult technically, a malicious user could potentially use the viewer to access files on the victim’s computer. We currently have no evidence of this vulnerability ever being exploited.

This Security Update 2008-10-06 is required to continue to log-in to Second Life. By downloading the update, you will upgrade the software on your computer to version 1.20.17:

• Second Life Release Viewer 1.20.17

For Residents who use the Release Candidate viewer, you are required to update to RC5, which also includes other latest bug fixes:

• Second Life Release Candidate Viewer 1.21 RC5

Earlier versions of Second Life (1.19.1, 1.19, and before) include the serious vulnerabilities and are no longer supported. You will be prompted to upgrade to the latest version on your next login.

For any Residents who prefer / have been using earlier versions that do not include WindLight rendering, we have created a page on the Second Life Wiki that explains how to turn all related graphics settings to “Low,” effectively turning off WindLight in the current official viewer.

The source code for these new 1.20 and 1.21 RC5 viewers will be made available via the usual open source channels.

For discussion about the issue, please visit this thread in the SL Forums.

Update 2008-10-02 08:43am : the rolling restart is now complete.

Update 2008-10-02 05:18am : the second-half rolling restart has begun.

Update 2008-10-01 07:39am : the first-half rolling restart is complete.

Update 2008-10-01 05:08am : the first-half rolling restart has begun. This morning, odd numbered hosts are being restarted.

Update 2008-09-30 08:55pm : the pilot deploy to ~3000 regions is complete.

There will be a rolling restart to deploy server version 1.24.7 to Second Life this week. 1.24.7 is currently deployed to the “Second Life Beta Server” channel of the Preview Grid. The changes in this version may be found on the Second Life Beta Server Release Notes page on our public wiki.

Each region will be restarted but once, and should only remain down for 5-10 minutes. If your region stays down for more than 20 minutes, please contact support.

We will follow our usual three-stage deploy with this rolling restart. The current anticipated schedule for the deploy is:

• Tuesday, Sep 30, 8:00-10:00PM: A pilot group of ~3000 regions will be restarted.
• Wednesday, Oct 1, 5:00-9:00AM: Half of Second Life will be restarted.
• Thursday, Oct 2, 5:00-9:00AM: The rest of Second Life will be restarted.

Discussion of this rolling restart will be held in this thread on the Second Life forums.

We are releasing the fifth iteration of the Viewer 1.21 Release Candidate (RC4). Please help us to identify any new bugs before it becomes an official download for Second Life.

If you have already been using the Release Candidate (RC3), you will now be required to update to RC4 with the latest bug fixes. But, participating in the Release Candidate viewers is completely optional. You may install this viewer side-by-side with the official 1.20 viewer that you normally use.

In RC4, we have repaired the most pressing bug you reported regarding inadvertent Touch_start events on mouse-clicks. A complete list of fixes is available in the Full release notes.

Please visit the Test Viewers page to download the 1.21 RC4 viewer — or when your Release Candidate viewer prompts you to upgrade to the new version.

You can discuss the release of this new Release Candidate here in the SL Forums.

We expect this to be the final Release Candidate in the 1.21 viewer series, barring any Showstoppers that you may find. Please of course continue to report new issues in the Issue Tracker and set the “Affects Version/s” to “1.21 Release Candidate”. We can only investigate and solve issues that are reported there.

Linden Lab has released an optional update to the Second Life viewers today to address a potential security issue. Recently an audit identified a possible vulnerability. If a malicious user were able to obtain the IP address and port of a Resident’s viewer, then the malicious user could forge data packets to the Resident’s computer. This could be done in a way to cause the viewer to return enough information about its session to allow the attacker to initiate various server-side operations as if they were the Resident, including L$ transactions.

In the case of L$ transactions, this action would be visible to you: if this were to occur, the viewer would report the transaction after it occurred in the normal blue dialog box. Also, you are always able to inspect the transaction log to see recent transactions. This would allow you to notice and report these actions for violating the Second Life Terms of Service.

This type of malicious action would constitute a violation of the Terms of Service, and would be against the law in some locations. At this time we have no evidence that this vulnerability was ever exploited.

To eliminate this vulnerability, we have now updated the Second Life servers to transmit the messages over an encrypted channel (HTTPS). Now that the server upgrade is complete, we are releasing updated viewers that only accept these messages when transmitted over an encrypted channel. Once you have downloaded the update, if a malicious third party were to attempt to send messages over the old channel (UDP), they would be ignored.

Again, we have no indication to date that this security issue has ever been exploited or is being exploited currently. However, we strongly encourage Second Life Residents to update to the latest viewer with the security patches in place. The viewers are:

• Second Life Release Viewer 1.20.16 (this updates 1.20.15, released on July 24th)
• Second Life Release Candidate Viewer 1.21 RC3 (this updates RC2 and includes additional bug fixes as part of the usual release candidate cycle)

We have not provided a security update to older viewers (such as the 1.19 series) which are older than the official supported Second Life viewer. To take advantage of this security update, we do encourage Residents using version 1.19 to update if possible to version 1.20.16. However, this upgrade is not mandatory in order to continue to use Second Life. An old viewer will alert you that a new version is available.

The updated source code for these new 1.20 and 1.21 RC viewers is being made available via the usual open source channels.

For discussion about the issue, please visit the Second Life Forum: http://forums.secondlife.com/forumdisplay.php?f=350

Update 09/13 06:00AM : 1.24.5.96115 is everywhere on the grid now.

Update 09/13 05:05AM : We are going to revert the pilot group from 1.24.5.96378 to the more-stable 1.24.5.96115 that is on the rest of the grid, beginning shortly.

Update 09/12 08:47AM : The second-half rolling restart completed about 45 minutes ago.

Update 09/12 05:22AM : The second-half rolling restart is now beginning.

Update 09/11 10:15PM : the first-half rolling restart is complete.

Update 09/11 07:51PM : based on a slightly higher crash rate for 1.24.5.96378, we will be deploying the previous version (1.24.5.96115) as 1.24.5 to the entire grid. The first-half rolling restart is beginning now.

Update 09/11 01:00PM : the pilot group of ~3000 regions as been updated to 1.24.5.96378.

Update 09/11 05:13AM : our Brighton developers fixed a couple of more small bugs, the patches for which we want to get into the 1.24.5 update. We are going to put those two fixes through QA today, and redo the pilot roll. That puts us on this schedule:

• 09/11 before noon : redo the pilot roll to the same group of ~3000 regions
• 09/11 7-11pm : a rolling restart of half of the regions in Second Life
• 09/12 5-9am : a rolling restart of the rest of Second Life

Update 09/10 09:57PM : the pilot roll to ~3000 regions is complete.

We will be deploying server version 1.24.5 to Second Life this week. This version includes no new major features, but fixes bugs with the current 1.24.4 server that is on Second Life. More details of what’s been changed can be found on the Second Life Wiki’s release notes page for 1.24.

This rolling restart will follow our usual three-stage deploy:

• Wed, 09/10, 9pm : A pilot group of ~3000 regions will be restarted.
• Thu, 09/11, 5-9am : Half of Second Life will be restarted.
• Fri, 09/12, 5-9am : The remainder of Second Life will be restarted.

As with all rolling restarts, each region will receive warnings starting 5 minutes before they are restarted. No region should stay down more than 10 or 20 minutes; if your region stays down longer than 20 minutes, please contact support.

Further discussion of the 1.24.5 server deploy can be found in this thread in the Second Life forums.

We are releasing the third iteration of the Viewer 1.21 Release Candidate (RC2). Please help us to identify new bugs (and try out the new features) before it becomes an official download for Second Life.

If you have already been using the Release Candidate (RC0 or RC1), you will now be required to update to RC2 with the latest bug fixes. But, participating in the Release Candidate viewers is completely optional. You may install this viewer side-by-side with the official 1.20 viewer that you normally use.

NOTE: We have solved the crash problem with a Mac PowerPC processor. Therefore we have returned to our normal process to require all participants to upgrade from the previous RC1. (This is so we can gather clear feedback only on the latest set of fixes to the code.)

In RC2, we have solved some bugs that appeared before, but not all bugs you have reported. A complete list of fixes is available in the Full release notes.

Please visit the Test Viewers page to download the 1.21 RC2 viewer — or when your Release Candidate viewer prompts you to upgrade to the new version.

You can discuss the release of this new Release Candidate here in the SL Forums.

Be sure to report new issues in the Issue Tracker and set the “Affects Version/s” to “1.21 Release Candidate”.  We can only investigate and solve issues that are reported there!