Mesh seems to still be the top priority. Two of the release channels are running Mesh Enabled versions; Le Tigre and Magnum. Blue Steel is running a Server Maintenance upgrade. The Lindens have posted in the Wiki what changes are coming over the next few upgrades.

State of the Art?

Main Grid

The upgrade called Improved HTTP Service made it to the main grid last week. One of the items is improved texture fetch. As more users pile on HTTP Texture Get a problem was found in the servers and routers that handle the requests. Lately I’ve seen the time needed for textures to download go up. I’ve also seen more textures simply not download. I’ve also been in crowded places where I’ve changed groups 2 or 3 times to all the avatars to render. I still think changing groups to rez avatars sounds silly, but I see it work. This fix should correct the problem, but I can’t say I have seen improvement.

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I couldn’t make the Beta Server Group meeting Thursday. But I lucked out and Oskar got the minutes posted on the wiki. So, here is the interesting stuff.

Homestead Performance

A couple of weeks ago a problem caused the script timing in homesteads to go haywire and slow things down. This week the fix for that problem made it to the main grid. So, performance should be much better now.

Release Channels

The Wednesday roll of new code to the release channels was delayed until Thursday. Even then only the Magnum release channel got new code. This is the code that improves the HTTP service. In its first few hours Coyot Linden says it has performed well. If that is the case for the rest of the week it could roll to main grid next Tuesday.

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I’m writing this the last day of week 29. But, server news is always after the fact. For those working on Linden server code things have been busy for the past weeks. Updates to the community seem to be more brief than usual. They have been fixing more and writing less. So, my updates lag as I try to figure out where things are and make sense out what I read and hear. So, here is the latest information I have.

Proof Server Folks are a Bunch of Sharks (Inside Joke)

Week 28

Oskar Linden tells us that several things went wrong in week 28. We saw emergency roll backs. In the Mesh Prep 2 regions sculpties were suddenly being converted to tori. Not all sculpties were converted. Only those sculpties using a stitching type of none.

Stitching types are the way objects are unwrapped to work with how textures are applied. It is a sort of UVMapping thing. Cylinders have a simple style of unwrap that produces a rectangular shape. Think of cutting a cylinder down one side and spreading it out flat.

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Since Monday was a holiday in the US there was no Tuesday roll out to the main grid. However, we did see the Release Channels rolled back and the main grid software installed there. This is just until they add a new batch of fixes to the Mesh Prep update that was on Le Tigre and the Mesh Prep update that was on Magnum.

Slowing

Week 27 is the second week for the main grid running with the new Mono2 update in place. The main grid has many more strange conditions than can be found in the Release Channels. So, problems not revealed in testing show up. In the article Second Life Server Update Week 26 I explain one of the cases where Release Channel testing did not find a problem that quickly showed up when rolled to the main grid.

Services Failure

During week 27 there were some reports of scripts still slowing. There may be a problem when a region is using up all the available script time. If you’re seeing a slow down, check the JIRA’s.

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This week saw the Mono2 update roll out to the main grid. This update has cycled through the testing process for weeks. Many were looking forward to its roll. Things did not go as well as expected. The problem, new fixes and coming fixes are discussed below.

The Seljuks Empire

Homestead Problems

The Mono2 roll out revealed a structural problem in the testing cycle. The percent of homestead regions in the release channels was too small to catch a problem in this upgrade. Hours after the Tuesday roll out the Lindens knew they had a problem. By noon Tuesday they knew the problem was big. None of the homestead regions were working well. By Wednesday morning they realized the scope of the problem.

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Servers - Image by: dumbledad @ Flickr

Today one of the long pending updates has finally rolled out to the main grid. With any luck, it will work fine and a roll back can be avoided. So, what is in this new roll out?

Mono2

The big gun in this roll out is Mono2. Kelly Linden is generally blamed for the Mono2 Update… well… attributed is probably a better word. But, since no good deed goes unpunished… we can thank him while gathering tar and features. Whatever your feelings on Mono2, it has been a long time coming. Today it was rolled out to the main grid.

Mono2 is an update to the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) system. The original language is one created by Linden Lab for use in Second Life (SL). Scripts are used by residents to make things like doors open and teleports teleport. Scripts are written in a language. Many of you will have heard of JavaScript, which is used widely with web pages. LSL is a somewhat JavaScript like language used exclusively in Second Life with a dialect used in OpenSim (OSSL). I suppose one could say the relationship between JavaScript and LSL is a bit like English and Spanish being Latin based languages. Your ability to speak one does not allow you to speak the other, but any other Latin based language will be a bit easier to learn.

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The week of 6/12-18 there was not a main server roll out. The week of 6/19-25 we did get a roll out on the main grid. The roll out had the group chat fixes.

Group Chat

Group chat has been receiving attention. The Utility Servers were updated over a week ago. Now the region simulators are updated, a minor fix.

One of the Group Chat Problems found was the Utility Server for chat had to send chat messages to multiple people in a region. If ten people were in a region the server had to send ten copies of chat updates to the region. This change allows the utility server to send the sim one message and the simulator distributes the chat updates. This sim change is not something that makes a lot of difference to most users. But, any load taken off the utility servers running group chat helps.

The previous update to the utility servers has made a significant difference to group chat for everyone. Enough so that this alarming JIRA was filed: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7031

Group Chat Performance

The above image is a plot of chat messages (messages + group status updates) per minute sampled over one day. Each dot is one of the 16 utility nodes.

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