[Resolved 10:45am PST] - The database has recovered and all issues have been resolved.

[10:30am PST] - We are currently experiencing a problem with the database. There may be difficulties with logging in, rezzing objects, completing transactions, and searching. We are aware of this issue and our ops team are working to resolve it as swiftly as possible. In the mean time, please avoid making important transactions or rezzing no-copy objects.

[RESOLVED 8:56] Technicians have restored communications for the affected regions.

Approximately 400 regions have lost communications. Technicians are working to correct the issue. Please monitor this post for updates.

[3.20 AM Pacific - RESOLVED] - Voice maintenance is now complete.

[2.00 AM Pacific] - Voice maintenance has commenced.

[5th Jan 09, 12 PM Pacific]  There is scheduled maintenance for Inworld Voice service beginning approximately 2:00AM PST on January 6th.  The maintenance is anticipated to last about one hour.  Inworld Voice service will be unavailable during this time.  Please monitor this post for updates.

We have all experienced the sometimes strange and mind-bending intersection of real and virtual in Second Life.  Just before Thanksgiving I had the opportunity to attend an exhibit at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which features a build in Second Life called Dante Hotel on an island known as Hotwire.

The SFMOMA exhibit intends to “examine how artists have engaged members of the public as essential collaborators in the art-making process”.  The corresponding exhibit in Second Life displays the archives of a remarkable artist and film maker, Lynn Hershman Leeson.

Viewing the Dante Hotel in Second Life from SFMOMA

Lynn rezzed in Second Life in 2005 when Henry Lowood and others at the Stanford Humanities Lab suggested Second Life as an appropriate place to migrate some of her archived projects which were housed at the Stanford Library.  Her goal was to make her history accessible digitally, and the project came into being as Life Squared.

Maybe because it felt so familiar to my experience as an avatar, I found the Roberta Breitmore story, showcased in its own room at the Hotel, to be especially intriguing.  For years Roberta Breitmore was a “private performance of a simulated person”; a fascinating exploration of what it’s like to express yourself, even partially, through another personality.  You can meet the latest incarnation of Roberta at the Dante Hotel in Second Life, where she is currently serving as a guide for the SFMOMA museum attendees.

Roberta Breitmore 1974-1978

For a performance artist such as Lynn, Second Life adds a new dimension to the original exploration of the work.  As she describes it, “By putting the archive of my work in Second Life, I was able to transcend the original essence of the piece into a new, hybrid interactive and participatory structure. “

As a backdrop for her digital archive, Lynn and the team from Stanford (Michael Shanks, Henry Lowood, Jeffrey Schnapp, Henrik Bennetson, Henry Segerman and Jeff Aldrich) decided to recreate the Dante Hotel in Second Life.  The Dante Hotel was the real-life scene of one of her earliest works, a living piece of art that she implemented in collaboration with Eleanor Coppola.  Today the Dante Hotel in Second Life serves as both a re-creation of the original piece, and as the gallery for a series of other exhibits of Hershman’s work, including the current SFMOMA show.

Selected documentation of The Dante Hotel: Hotwire Island, Second Life

You can read more about the SFMOMA exhibit here, and here.

Visit the Dante Hotel on Hotwire Island in Second Life: SLurl to Dante Hotel

Comments?  Thoughts?  See you in the forums.

      

[RESOLVED 15:08] Logins have been restored and all inworld services appear to be functioning normally.  Please feel free to resume your regular activities, including purchases and rezzing.

[UPDATE 14:39] All logins are now blocked as technicians continue to investigate the cause of the issues.

Technicians are currently investigating an issue which may interfere with inworld functionality. Logins are partially blocked and as a precaution we are recommending residents refrain from making inworld transactions and rezzing no copy objects for the time being. Please monitor this post for updates and further information.

We will begin the rolling restarts for the homestead regions at 8am PST, this should take approximately 5 hours, we will update the post when resolved.

[07:43 PST] The land store will be taken offline at 8am PST for Homestead launch and will be restored at approximately 11am PST

[4:30] Logins have been re-enabled.

[4:24] Logins have been temporarily disabled. Please continue to monitor the blog for updates.

[2:07 PST] Logins have been re-enabled.

[1:59 PST] Logins have been disabled. Please continue to monitor the blog for updates.

[1:10 PST] Inworld services appear to have stabilized. Transactions have been cleared for use. Please continue to monitor the blog for updates.

[12:40 PST] Logins have been re-enabled with inworld services slowly coming back online. Please refrain from transactions until we have given an all-clear.

[12:21 PST] Logins have now been re-enabled.

[12:13 PST] Logins have temporarily been disabled.  We will update you again when problems have been resolved.

As we have previously blogged, Homesteads will be launched as a new product on Monday 5th January. Those of you that own an Openspace should already have received emails from us explaining the changes taking place; this post is to ensure that you have as much information as possible ahead of the change.

In launching a new product, there are many areas that will change, including additions to the website, new knowledgebase articles, and of course, changes to the Land Store itself.

Here’s a quick wrap-up of what to expect:

• The Land Store will be closed from 8am until noon SLT on Monday to allow us to make the needed changes. When it comes back, both Homesteads and Openspaces will appear as options for owners of full islands.
• On Monday, all Openspace regions will undergo a rolling restart. The large majority of these restarts should happen before noon.
• If you have declared to us, via a support ticket, that your Openspace will genuinely be used for light use scenery, then from Monday it will remain an Openspace. However, it will have the 10 agent limit and 750 prim maximum applied. This means that to remain an Openspace, a region needs to have its prim count lowered to 750 prims or less before Monday. Posting of classifieds and events will not be possible on these regions.
• All of the other Openspace regions will become Homesteads after the restart. There will be no change to the prim limit for Homesteads, but there is an agent cap of 20. Classifieds and events will work as usual. The billing for Homesteads will move to USD$95 per month, starting on the next bill date that falls on or after the 5th January. If you normally bill on the 25th, then your January 25th charge will be USD$95.
• Educators that have paid for a half year or full year in advance via our invoiced order system will be unaffected until their renewal date, when they should expect the new fees to be reflected on their renewal invoice. If you need to confirm your renewal date, and what the fees will be, please contact the Concierge team.

Script Limits

To maintain the best performance for all our Residents, we recognize that script limits are necessary. This is especially true for those products like Homesteads and Openspaces where there are multiple regions sharing a CPU. Without limits, one region overloaded with scripts could negatively affect the performance of other regions on the same CPU.

In Q1 we hope to release some new code in the simulator to capture very detailed data about script load from all of the regions on the Grid. This additional logging will not affect performance.

Once we have this data, we will begin sharing that information with the community and talking about where the limits should be. The aim here is to prevent the overuse that can negatively impact the performance of other regions on the same CPU, and most islands will probably fall below any limits we put in place. However those limits are more likely to impact the minority of islands that are very heavy script users.

Even after we have decided on what those limits should be, we still have to then build into the viewer the tools you will need to monitor and measure your own script usage. Once those tools have gone through QA, First Look and Release Candidate stages, they will finally make it into the default viewer. Then we will need to provide you all with a reasonable length of time to adjust to those limits.

This is a process that will take some time. To give you a rough idea of our current timeline, we plan on finalizing what the script limits will be in Q1, then releasing the Viewer tools in Q2 for possible enforcement in Q3. Once we have more definite dates, we will let you know.

Current performance issue

Finally, one last item to let you know about. We have identified a minor issue on the servers that causes a certain process to get stuck. This happens rarely, and we see only a handful of cases per day, but when it does happen it causes FPS performance to dip on regions on that CPU. For that reason, this affects Homesteads and Openspaces more than full regions, as they share a CPU.

While we work to fix this problem, we are putting in place a script that regularly hunts out and kills these stuck processes automatically. This means that in the unlikely event that your region does become affected, within an hour or two it should return to normal performance. If after a few hours it still hasn’t recovered, please contact support.

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact support as usual; the Concierge team offers telephone and livechat support 24×7 so please do get in touch. 

Just to recap:

The Homestead and Openspaces changeover takes place on Monday, January 5, 2009.

Definitions

• Openspace region: Light use and intended only for scenery, it allows for 10 agents and 750 prims.  No classified or events postings are possible for Openspace regions.  USD$75 per month.
• Homestead region: For light commercial and residential including rental, Homesteads have a 20 agent limit and 3750 prims.  Classified and event postings are allowed.  USD $95 per month.

Timing:

• January 5th: From 8am until 12 noon SLT, Land Store closed for maintenance. Upon opening, both Homesteads and Openspaces will be available as options for island owners.
• January 5th: All Openspace regions to undergo rolling restart.  Most will happen before Noon SLT.

Billing

• If your normal monthly bill date is before the 5th you will be billed your new rate in February 09
• If your normal monthly bill date is on or after the 5th, you will be billed the new rate in January 09
• Educators that have paid for a half or full year in advance will be unaffected by rate increase until their renewal date. For more information and to confirm renewal dates contact the Concierge team.

Script Limits

• We will need to implement script limits to prevent a heavily overloaded region from negatively affecting the performance of another region.

Timing for Script Limits:

• In Q1, we will be gathering data on script load, and sharing this usage data with the community before deciding what the most appropriate limits are.
• In Q2, we expect there to be Viewer changes to allow you to monitor your script usage against those limits.
• In Q3 we will begin enforcing script limits.

      

[RESOLVED 3:13pm PST] - Logins have been re-enabled. In-world issues have been resolved and you may safely resume normal activities.

[UPDATE 2:48pm PST] - Logins have been temporarily disabled as we work on this issue.

[2:41pm PST] - We are currently experiencing a problem with the database that may result in difficulties logging in, rezzing objects, completing transactions, and searching. We are aware of this issue and our ops team are working to resolve it as swiftly as possible. In the mean time, please avoid making important transactions or rezzing no-copy objects.

I did not want to start the year with offline post, but I have to. My last post of the last year was modified. Maybe, there are other modifications, too. I do not know.

I do not keep any money on my google account. Therefore, it is not worth grabbing my password. My account does not contain money, but it contains a lot of work. I ask everybody having fun with getting passwords not to brother me. I am not a computer engineer; breaking my account is not a real trophy. Please, leave me alone. If you do not like about what I write, just do not read. That is all.

I am not very good at English, so writing an average post including checking demands more than an hour. I know that my posts contain mistakes and my English is not the best. I do not mind if your hobby is finding glitch in the blog. If you indeed like it and if it makes you happy, then please do so. You can add comment expressing your disapproval. I will not delete or modify such posts.

You can also seek marks of evil conspiracy in my blog. You can think that I am liar or bad person. You can be happy for it, too. I am not against it. I am also glad that you play with my blog.

I just ask not to wreck my work. I am weak to start it again.

I want to say thank to my friend, who warned me. It is good to have such friends who inform me instead of other. Who wanted to help me and did not want to play role of great private dick.

So, beat me, kick me and comment my posts in bad style, if you like. Just do not ruin my work; I beg you.