Server

Second Life News 2013-35 #2

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ToS Change?

There seems to be another ToS change. I have not looked to see what it is, but I did get a prompt to agree to the ToS today. I was in a hurry to be some place, so I didn’t read it.

Main and RC Channels

All the planned changes covered Tuesday have rolled out. All seem to be working. So, there really isn’t any ‘news’ for that part of Second Life™.

The server change that allows a server to restart as soon as all avatars are out of the region is on the RC’s. For now this is a region owner or estate manager tool. But, the plan is to move it into the Server Update Roll Out process to speed up the process.

There has been some discussion of having the server trigger a shutdown-coming-event in scripting. This would allow viewers and scripts to respond to a shutdown. One could have a viewer TP you to another region rather than let you get logged out. Expect such a feature to be a third party viewer feature first.

For now this is just talk. 

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Second Life Access Controls

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The release candidate package running on all three server RC channels has a feature to add more access controls. We did not get much information on the feature. However Maestro Linden has posted more information in the SL Forum in response to questions.

Plus there were follow up questions and follow up answers. The idea is to make griefing harder and to give parcel owners more control. But, the controls for the feature are not in the current main SL Viewer. We will see them in a coming release. 

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Second Life News 2013-35

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We have a bit of news on the server roll outs. The main gris will get the maintenance package from Magnum. This is the package with the Gray Box fix BUG-3547, the llListen fix BUG-3291, some crash fixes, and internal bug fixes… whatever those are.

Release Channels

All three release channels will get the same package on Wednesday. This package includes a physics fix to stop a griefing problem, another crash mode is fixed, fater regaion restarts for regions restarted by owners or estate managers. Rather than run through the full count down, the region will restart once all the avatars have left.

There are new region and parcel access controls coming. This package has the server side of those controls. Until we see a viewer with the corresponding controls, this change is not actionable.

Second Life’s SSA 2013-34

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Server Side Appearance baking is considered a success. We still have some bake fail issues and I’ll get to those. The Firestorm team has put out an article about SSA here: Server Side Appearance a Success! This article is worth the time to read. Jessica Lyon points out how the ignorant are complaining about how the Lab should have worked on something that really needed fixing… like bake fail was not a big enough problem.

Third Party Viewer Meeting 2013-34
Third Party Viewer Meeting 2013-34

Nyx Linden spoke at the TPV Dev’s meeting Friday (week 43) about SSA. Friday a new set of SSA changes were going external that means the SSA code the Lab has been working on for the viewer was made public. TPV Dev’s can now look at the code, find bugs, problems, and begin adding it to their development code.

Nyx says the Lab has this new code working in their development viewers. But, they currently consider it mostly untested. I suppose that means it has not passed through formal QA testing on the way to a viewer release candidate and remains mostly in development. 

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Second Life News 2013-34 #2

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Nothing much new from the Beta Server user group. SSA did roll out. It is working for all but a few people. There are some bake fails here and there. Most are inventory fails that seem to affect the viewer and SSA servers too.

Server Beta 2013-24
Server Beta 2013-24

There are likely other causes for bake fail. We will find them as time passes. But, in general most are finding the new SSA system to be way better. 

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Where is SSA Rolling To?

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I got a question about the Deploys thread and where the SSA roll will actually be running. Caleb Linden wrote the Deploys post this week and it is a bit brief. But, all the important stuff is there. Even Maestro Linden tends to shorten what he posts assuming people reading the posts have a basic understanding of the server release candidate process.

Don't Panic
Don’t Panic

In Second Life the learning curve is so high we don’t try to educate every new user with all the details. If we gave them everything the curve would be way too steep. No one would remember that big an information dump. We also do not repeatedly include basic information. That would burn us out. So, now and then we have to catch up the new users. So…

SSA (Server Side Appearance (baking)) is everywhere… or will be by noon SLT Wednesday. 

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