Second Life Grid Status Reports

We are releasing the second iteration of the new Viewer 1.21 Release Candidate (RC1). Please 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 1.20 viewer that you normally use.

We have addressed some of the bugs that appeared in RC0, but not all bugs you have reported. A complete list for RC1 is available in the Full release notes.

We do need your help to find crashes and other feedback! We have improved the precision of crash information that we receive when you send us Crash Reports. With the reports that you send us from RC1, we will be able to create a more stable RC2 and RC3 viewer.

NOTE: Because of a number of known bugs, we have made this RC1 viewer an optional upgrade from the previous Release Candidate. We are again investigating that this RC1 fails to run on a Mac PowerPC. For PowerPC users, please wait for RC2 before upgrading your Release Candidate.

Please visit the Test Viewers page to download the 1.21 RC1 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 “1.21 Release Candidate”.

Update 2008-09-03 10:00pm : The rolling restart is complete.

Update 2008-09-03 07:25pm : The second-half rolling restart is beginning now.

Update 2008-09-03 08:51am : The first-half rolling restart is complete.

Update 2008-09-03 05:37am : The first-half rolling restart is in progress. Odd-numbered hosts that do not yet have 1.24.4 are being restarted this morning.

Update 2008-09-02 09:37pm : The pilot roll is complete.

Update 2008-09-02 08:47pm : the pilot roll to 2859 regions has begun.

We will be performing a rolling restart to deploy server version 1.24.4 to Second Life. This server deploy does not contain any new features, but has fixes for some bugs found in the deploy of server version 1.24 that was completed last week.

Release notes for version 1.24 (and 1.24.4) can be found here on the Second Life Wiki.

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

• Tuesday, 09/02, 08:00PM : A pilot group of ~3000 regions will receive 1.24.4 in a rolling restart.
• Wednesday, 09/03, 05:00-09:00AM : Half of the grid will receive 1.24.4 in a rolling restart.
• Wednesday, 09/03, 07:00-11:00PM : The remainder of Second Life will receive 1.24.4 in a rolling restart.

As is usual with rolling restarts, regions will be down typically for 5-10 minutes. If your regions stays down for more than 20 minutes, please contact support. There is no way to delay the restart of a region once the rolling restart has begun.

Discussion of this rolling restart will happen in the Second Life forums here.

This is an update to the previous report and announcement about the 1.21 Release Candidate: We have been able to resolve the problem which causes an immediate crash for residents with a Mac PowerPC processor.

The download file for Mac has been updated. If you re-download the Test Viewer from our downloads page, it should install and run successfully on your PowerPC computer.

Discussion about the RC0 viewer continues here in the SL Forums, and on the Public Issue Tracker.

We are releasing the first iteration of the new Viewer 1.21 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 1.20 viewer that you normally use.

As many scripters are keenly aware, this 1.21 viewer brings you the ability to compile scripts using Mono on regions running Server 1.24.  (Learn more about Mono in a video tutorial by Torley Linden.) But this viewer could also be called “the viewer of bug fixes”:  There are over 155 fixes that solve bugs from previous versions of Second Life.  Many of these are small improvements that make existing features work more smoothly (like menu shortcuts, 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.

NOTE: Because of a number of known bugs, we have made this RC0 viewer an optional upgrade from the previous Release Candidate.  For example, we are investigating that this RC0 fails to run on a Mac PowerPC.  You can choose to wait for RC1 before upgrading your Release Candidate.  Also, some features in this viewer require you to be in a region that is running Server 1.24 – which is being deployed to the entire grid this week.

Still, we do need your help to find crash cases and other feedback!  Please visit the Test Viewers page to download the 1.21 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 “1.21 Release Candidate”.

For more information, see this post on the main blog.

The version to be deployed is currently on the “Second Life Beta Server” channel of the Preview Grid (Aditi).

(This roll has been superceded by the rolling restart to revert 1.23.0 to 1.22.4.)

After this morning’s rolling restart of half the grid, a problem was discovered with “floating text” over objects (SVC-2633). We have fixed that problem. We will be rolling out the fixed server version tonight (Friday night) at 8PM to all regions currently running server version 1.23.0. (That includes regions restarted last night and this morning.) The remaining regions (those currently on 1.22.4) will be restarted tomorrow morning for the deploy. For more information, see this post on the main blog.

We are postponing the rolling restart again by a day. We may need to postpone it until next week; we will make that call tomorrow (Thursday). At the moment, the plan is to have the pilot roll Thursday evening, followed by half-grid rolls on Friday and Saturday morning. Please see the post on the main blog for more information about this rolling restart.

The rolling restart this week has slipped one day. We will do a pilot roll Wednesday evening, 07/09. Thursday morning between 5 and 9AM, we will deploy server version 1.23 to half of the regions on the grid. Friday morning between 5 and 9AM, we will deploy server version 1.23 to the rest of the grid. For more information, please see this post on the main blog.

For more information, please see this post on the public blog.

For more information please see the announcement on the Official Second Life Blog.

A new Release Candidate (RC8) viewer has been made available on the Test Software page for connecting to the Second Life Grid. This viewer contains bug fixes and/or soon-to-be-released new features. Release Candidate viewers are optional and can be installed side by side with the primary viewer.

Please remember: try the RC viewer only if you want to participate in the bug reporting process and identify issues before it becomes the default viewer.