A Day of Rolling Restarts

Yesterday, Monday the 17th, was a bit frustrating for myself and a number of others on the Grid. When logging back on, I would appear with two avatars on at the same time, one I logged out with and another I had worn not long before. And when looking at the contents of avatar folders, I would sometimes find much of it missing. I wasn't alone as others complained of being "scalped."

But the big thing was all of those sim restarts. Just minutes after logging in, the sim I was in announced it was restarting, warning if I was still around I'd be logged off. Once in a blue moon, I would have a second that day. But the restarts kept coming and coming, some weary residents describing themselves as refugees. I must have encountered almost a dozen that evening.

The next day at work, I ran into someone whom had been using Second Life that night as well. He asked me if I had crashed a lot, and when I explained the restarts, he commented, "So it wasn't just me."

Checking the Linden Lab Grid Status reports, there were a few, the latest being one on the sim restarts:

[RESOLVED 9:04AM PDT, 18 October 2011] Today’s main server rolling restarts have been completed.

[UPDATED 5:30AM PDT, 18 October 2011] Rolling restarts on the main Second Life server channel will begin momentarily. Please refrain from rezzing no copy objects, making inworld L$ transactions and please save all builds. We will update this post when the restarts have completed.

[POSTED 6:43PM PDT, 17 October 2011] Rolling restarts for regions on the main Second Life server channel will be performed on Tuesday, October 18th at approximately 5:00am PDT. Please make sure to save all builds and refrain from making purchases during this time.

They also mentioned a "Critical OS Software Upgrade," which would cause a lot of restarts.

[RESOLVED 11:57PM PDT, 17 October 2011] All maintenance this evening has been completed.

[POSTED 6:57PM PDT, 17 October 2011] The evening round of upgrades is now underway. Some regions may experience up to an hour of downtime during this maintenance. We will update this blog when additional information becomes available.

Hopefully the mess of restarts is over, before my friends start getting Gypsy costumes for Halloween.

Bixyl Shuftan