Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Today, Tuesday, we are getting a roll to the main channel. This updates is made up of a crash fix and minor ‘improvements’.
We do not yet know what is happening with RC channels. They are marked TBD – To Be Decided. We might or might not have a roll out to the RC channels tomorrow, Wednesday.
Last week (7) saw an unusual rollout for an update with a security fix in the under lying Linux code.
This week (8) there is no roll to the main channel. There will be a roll to the RC channels with all three getting the same package; RC BlueSteel, LeTigre, and Magnum. There is a Server crash fix and some minor improvements…
So, not much news on the server front.
Thursday we had a surprise roll out to the RC channels of the main grid. The package was a fix for a security exploit. Friday early in the morning the update rolled to the main channel of the grid.
So, what was going on? The details were published by April Linden 2016-02-19 11:18 AM in the SL Forum/Blog. See: Why the Friday Grid Roll?
This exploit was in part of Linux system software. The Linux developers made the patch. The Lindens had to figure out what it would do to the Second Life(TM) system. Was it needed? Yes, crackers could exploit SL. Would the patch break anything in the SL system? Nobody knew. They had to find out. So, the Lindens put a lot of effort into getting this exploit resolved.
We were not expecting any updates this week. But, we got one. The RC channels have been updated in a surprise roll out. We will likely see the package roll to the main grid as soon as the Lindens are confident the software is working well.
This departure from schedule is due to a security exploit.
As of now the Lindens are not talking about the exploit. But, they seldom do. We might hear a bit after it rolls to the main channel. But, I won’t be holding my breath.
As expected, there are no server updates this week, probably next week. My home region has not been restarted since 2/2/2016, two full weeks. The region seems to be working OK. The server stats shown in the Viewer Statistics Panel all look good.
Not much visibly happening with viewers. But, we may see a viewer promoted this week.
I’ve been using the Linden, Firestorm, and Catznip (R10) viewers recently. I have less problems and better performance with Catznip. That is not a test result. I haven’t done organized testing. But, my subjective experience is Catznip is behaving better right now.
I do see texture thrashing when using Catznip… less of that with Firestorm. It takes some time to get there, generally over an hour for me.
There are no rollouts this week to either the main or RC channels. As there are no RC updates this week there will be no update to the main channel next week (7). There is no information I am aware of about new packages for the RC channels for next week.
You may remember that last week’s server updates were about fixing problems that appear when server run for more than a week. I was speculating that this week they would be testing those fixes. They have already had QA and testing on the RC channels that make up about 20% of the main grid. Now they are getting a test as the ‘production’ software.
By this time next week we will know how well they did.
Comments in various places have me thinking the majority of the Lab’s effort on Second Life is now on the Project Bento. But, I suspect some changes will be needed on the server side. After all, the project only runs on certain servers in the ADITI (preview) grid. So, it could be that all server changes and fixes are being built for the Bento capable packages. As they need a break in the rollouts to test long term server stability, it may be saving them some work. Rather than build changes for the pre-Bento servers just build the fixes for Bento capable packages.
Some time ago the Lindens added the ability to enable and disable new features in the servers. So, our next server rollouts could be Bento capable, but with the feature disabled… or not. We’ll have to wait and see.