Technical Difficulties Keep Some Offline, Interfere With Support And Money Transactions

 

 Yesterday, Sunday August 23, some residents had trouble logging on, and if they were on weren't always able to make or see announcements. 

We are currently investigating the outage of our Support services. At this time residents may experience issues accessing their dashboard on Second Life, logging inworld, and the ability to access Live Chat or to submit a Support case. We greatly apologize for this inconvenience. Please follow this blog for any further updates.

Chat did continue to happen to a smaller degree, some residents noticing fewer people than expected showing up at events, and money transactions not going through. 

 

Finally at 2:57 PM SL time, almost three hours after the problem had been announced, Linden Lab stated the situation has been resolved. 

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

"Unscheduled Maintenance" Strikes Wednesday Afternoon, Night

 

If you had some trouble Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night inworld, from appearing as a cloud to inventory issues. You weren't alone. I saw in several groups inworld saying that they had problems rezzing, finding items in their inventory, seeing others, logging in and staying logged in, and other troubles.  In the Sunweavers community group, it's leader Rita Mariner would post about it, "Technical Issues With SL Tonight."

Seems LL broke SL.  No one can rezz anything.  I have a club of invisible people.  If the issue isn't cleared by start of dance, I will cancel it.

And as it turned out, Linden Lab was doing Unscheduled Maintenance at the time.

We are currently conducting an unscheduled maintenance & investigating an issue impacting logins. You may experience issues logging in or with rezzing items from your inventory during this time. Please monitor this blog for updates.

 

At 6:32 PM SL time, Linden Lab declared the issue resolved. But that wasn't the end of the troubles. Up to late morning the following day, people would continue to have issues with rezzing and seeing others. Various residents had things to say about it, including Rose Redfoxx (Rose Evans), who sent the Newser one memefied picture (left).

Bixyl Shuftan

 

News and Commentary: Logins Slightly Down, Sim Numbers Slightly Up Over 2022

 

 During the Coronaviris/Covid-19 Pandemic, the number of people using Second Life rose. Linden Lab stated in April 2020 that signups had gone up sixty percent since it started. In June 2020, CEO Ebbe Altberg stated the number of active users, those who were logging in at least once a month, had gone up to 900,000, a one-eighth of an increase over the previous year. 

Since then, the Lab has been quiet on just how many are coming in and staying in. There has been some speculation that with the Pandemic over, people have been leaving once more. In an article by Daniel Voyager, he stated that the daily peak has gone down slightly, from 55,000 about a year ago to about 48 to 53,000 this month. Checking the Second Life Grid Survey, this was the case. 

So it seems some people are leaving, though it appears to be a smaller number than those who joined during the Pandemic. Some who came back are sticking around, at least for now.

Of the number of sims, things looked more encouraging according to Daniel. With the growth of Belisseria, it should be no surprise to most that the total number of sims has continued to go up. He reported the total number at 27,659. This is an increase of over 2000 from two years ago. What will surprise some is that the majority of these, at least from two years ago, were private sims, from 17,024 to 18,370. But it should be noted almost all this increase was in 2021. The number of private sims didn't change much in just 2022, an overall increase of thirty-eight. But the number of Linden-owned sims grew at almost the same number, 378 more in 2021 and 380 more in 2022. 

 

So the number of private sims is still growing, but it appears economic troubles such as inflation causing the prices of everything from food and energy to rise and cut back on the amount of cash available for entertainment is resulting in fewer people getting new ones. 

So what do things have in store over the course of 2023? Difficult to say. If inflation drops and the global economy avoids a recession, we may see a few more people logging in and more people getting private sims. But if we end up with 1979-1980 style "stagflation," the news over the next several months may have some sim closings.

Source: Daniel Voyager's Blog

Bixyl Shuftan

Technical Difficulties For The Grid on Tuesday

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Tuesday January was the day rolling restarts were done this week around the Grid. Usually they go routine. But this time something went wrong. Some residents would have trouble logging in, and others noted some sims looked offline. When I tried logging in on Sunweaver Bay, the login screen got stuck in the middle of the progress. In various Second Life Discord channels, people noted their difficulties.

Eventually, the Lab noticed there was a problem, and posted on the Grid Status Report.

We are aware rolling restarts are taking longer than normal, and we are working to bring these regions back online as quickly as possible. We thank you for your patience! Please follow this blog for further updates. - 08:06 PST

We apologize for the delay, and are continuing to work to bring these regions back online as quickly as possible. We thank you for your patience! Please follow this blog for further updates. - 09:10 PST 

 

We are continuing to work on restoring the regions still offline from this morning's Rolling Restarts, and are making progress. Please watch this blog for updates. - 09:45 PST

 

Getting online, there was chatter about it in several groups I was in, including the Bellisserian chat. At one point, Abnor Mole spoke up, "The restarts this week have been going... poorly. The region your home is in it probably one of those affected, but it is not alone. The Lindens are well aware of the problem and working on it."

Eventually, the Lab finally fixed whatever the problem was, but decided to restart some of the sims again to make sure.

We believe this issue has been resolved but will be restarting some regions as part of the final process. Thank you for your continued patience! - 12:45 PST

Eventually, all was back to normal, with the usual lag, and the residents went on.
 
Bixyl Shuftan
 

Unscheduled Maintenance

Yesterday afternoon, people in some SL Discord groups were stating they were having trouble logging in. At 3:15 PM SL time, the Grid Status report stated there was some unscheduled maintenance going on.

We are currently performing unscheduled maintenance. At this time residents may experience trouble logging in, completing transactions, rezzing, and other in-world functions which may be unresponsive or slow. Please follow this blog for updates.

Before long, the issues were resolved, and people were able to log on without trouble.

Login Issues Keep Many Residents Offline

If you're having trouble logging in today, it's not just you. Today at 11:48AM SL time, it was announced on the Grid Status Report that there was an outage going on with parts of Second Life.

Some Second Life services are currently experiencing an outage. During this time, some Second Life services may be unavailable including, but not limited to: logging in, teleporting, and object rezzing. Please refrain from rezzing in-world, in addition to transacting in-world, on the Marketplace, or on the Lindex during this time. 

This follows an Unscheduled Inventory Maintenance on Friday October 25, in which some residents had similar issues.

Although much of California is expecting brownouts and blackouts due to massive wildfires, which could affect as many as two million people, San Francisco, where Linden Lab is located, is not expected to be affected.

Addition: As of 4PM SL time, the Lab is still trying to fix the issue behind the outage.

Source: CNN, San Francisco Chronicle

More Login Troubles

It's been a frustrating week for Second Life residents. On Sunday, people had trouble logging in over the course of the day. On Wednesday, April Linden admitted it was a Distributed Denial of Service attack. But the trouble happened again that night for a couple hours. And once again on Thursday, there were people getting disconnected and unable to log on, at some times worse than others.


We are currently experiencing issues with log ins that is currently being investigated. Residents may experience log outs at this time. Please continue to check this blog for updates.

The chatter I heard in local chat and group chat online, as well as a thread of the forums, was full of irritated comments. More than one wished the "script kiddies" would be caught and thrown in the slammer. Catching DDoSing hackers is difficult, but it can be done. A couple months ago, two were arrested after being exposed. In April, what was claimed to be "the largest DDoS website" was shut down, the hackers doing the deeds for hire, boasting they had been behind six million such attacks.

Sources: CSO, Forbes 

Bixyl Shuftan

April Linden Confirms Sunday DDoS Attack

 Second Life residents often found themselves disconnected and/or had trouble logging in. On Wednesday afternoon, April Linden announced in the Tools and Technology part of the official forums that it was the reason some residents suspected: A Directed Denial of Service attack.
On Sunday,

Hello amazing Residents of Second Life!

 

A few days ago (on Sunday, October 28th, 2018) we had a really rough day on the grid. For a few hours it was nearly impossible to be connected to Second Life at all, and this repeated several times during the day.

 

The reason this happened is that Second Life was being DDoSed.

 

Attacks of this type are pretty common. We’re able to handle nearly all of them without any Resident-visible impact to the grid, but the attacks on Sunday were particularly severe. The folks whothat were on call this weekend did their best to keep the grid stable during this time, and I’m grateful they did.

 

Sunday is our busiest day in Second Life each week, and we know there’s lot of events folks plan during it. We’re sorry those plans got interrupted. Like most of y’all, I too have an active life as a Resident, and my group had to work around the downtime as well. It was super frustrating.

 

As always, the place to stay informed of what’s going on is the Second Life Grid Status Blog. We do our best to keep it updated during periods of trouble on the grid.

 

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you inworld!

 

April Linden

 
Second Life Operations Team Lead

 

But Second Life's troubles weren't over quite yet. Later that day in the evening hours, it happened again, residents getting logged off and unable to log back in. Yours truly was able to log back in after a few hours. There was talk about another DDoS attack by some residents. But the Grid Status Report didn't show any problems.

Hopefully that's the last of the trouble this week.

Hat Tip: Inara Pey

Bixyl Shuftan

Login Issues Yesterday

If you had trouble logging in Second Life yesterday, Sunday October 29, you weren't alone. Facebook had a number of people asking, "anyone else having trouble logging on?" As it turned out, plenty were. In various groups I am in, and among those I ran into, people were complaining that it took multiple tries for them to get on, and were sometimes crashing. On the Grid Status Report, throughout the day, it was stated that these troubles were an issue, and Linden Lab was working on it.

We are currently experiencing issues with log ins that is currently being investigated. Residents may experience log outs at this time. Please continue to check this blog for updates.

As of 9PM SL time (Midnight EST), these problems were still going on.

Technical Glitches Keep Numbers of Residents Offline

On Sunday afternoon, November 19, just before 2PM SL time, a number of residents began saying they had trouble logging in, or relayed messages through Discord, Facebook, and other social media that they couldn't get on. In Second Life, people were being knocked offline. Various events described musicians and/or staff as having trouble coming on. Yours truly noticed other avatars seemed to take longer to rezz than usual. While this cannot be confirmed, one resident told me the number of people on the Grid had gone down from about 50,000 to about half that.

The Grid Status Report stated that Linden Lab was working on updating their Support Portal, which has been going on for a few days. At one point, Logins were described as having a "degraded performance," though nothing was mentioned about people having trouble staying online.