Here are some of today’s problems posted to the Second Life blog. I am still waiting for my friends list to update, using the new Windlight client, I don’t know who waiting is, but I’m getting tired of looking at him. Otherwise performance seems normal to me, i.e. slow.

[Resolved]Rails Application Error Aspects of secondlife.com which uses the rails application are unavailable. This includes Classifieds and the drop down for last name registration.

[RESOLVED] More DNS Woes Wow. Apparently it’s International Borked Router Day or something. We have another group of residents who are getting DNS failures when they try to reach us. This time, the malfunction’s in London.

[Resolved] Support Unavailable One of our web servers is currently having technical problems. If you need to view knowledge base articles, please log in as a guest.

Intermittent Issues with In World Voice The Operations Team is tracing a leak in the voice chat system. Over time, backbone services for various regions can become bloated and cause failure in group voice chats.

[CLEARED] Some Residents Experiencing DNS Failures on Login Some residents (and Lindens) are getting DNS errors trying to connect to Second Life. We’re not sure where the issue is yet or how widespread the impact is, but we’re on the hunt for it. We’ll keep you posted.

Popularity: 6%

If you are new to Second Life you may not even know how to report a bug or issue with Second Life, but, even some of the older residents avoid posting issues because of the JIRA, or Issue Tracker.

The public issue tracker, known as “Public JIRA”, “PJIRA”, or just “JIRA”, is an issue-tracking project management tool made by Atlassian that is located at http://jira.secondlife.com. It’s used by the Second Life open source initiative to organize issues (i.e. bugs and feature requests) submitted by the Second Life community into a searchable database. You, too, can submit issues you find when using the open source or standard versions of Second Life. Please familiarize yourself with the information in this page before proceeding to JIRA.

Bug reports created in JIRA are composed of a description of the problem and, if possible, a reproduction. New features are composed of descriptions of the proposed feature and how it should work. Both types of issues then get contributions from other users, such as better or simpler descriptions and reproductions, and popular issues accumulate votes from other users. Programmers in the open source community can attach “patches”, changes to the code that fix or implement the issue. These votes, as well as events like bug triages, help prioritize the issues. Those which are acknowledged are “imported” into the Lindens’ private copy of JIRA. Source: Second Life Wiki

Torley has posted his latest video tutorial to show you why you should do it, and how easy it is. I need to watch this one myself.

A sparkly new video tutorial, “How to report a bug”! I know some of you fear the Issue Tracker (AKA Public JIRA) and think it’s hard to file an issue — but rather than tell, in this vidtut, I show you why it matters and precisely how easy it is… Source: Tip of the Week #18: How to report a bug

Second Life Video Tutorial - How to report a bug

Posted to Video Tutorials on January 18, 2008

Click to Play | View Details

Higher quality version here.

Popularity: 17%

If you get around Second Life a lot, then you need to check out the SLTweets HUD, available inworld at DarkWood’s Magic Land and on SL Exchange. This handy little HUD allows you to post directly to your twitter account, a handy little feature and if you are interested my account is stoneculdesac.

But, the coolest features by far are the tagging and note taking you can do while in Second Life, and you don’t even need a twitter account for these. Using the command /123 note This is Avilion, Medieval Fantasy Role Play Community while I’m at Avilion, will place a page on your sltweets account map at sltweets.com that looks like this:

Buy using this command, /123 tag learning in second life, education, http://thegridlive.com while at the Ivory Tower of Primitives will place a page on your maps at Sltweets.com that looks like this:

Here is a pic showing you what the HUD can do:

Here is the complete listing of features from their site:

SLTweets HUD Twitter.com Features:

Twitter.com features require that you already have a Twitter.com twitter account.

Send Twitter Posts (Tweets) to your Twitter.com account from within Second Life (Ex. /123 post This is my first twitter post from SL).
Receive incoming Tweets from your Twitter.com Friends Timeline within Second Life.
Incoming Tweets and Alerts are displayed on the SLTweets HUD. (Tweet, who sent it and the time it was sent in SL time).
Tweet indicator notifies you of newly received tweets (flashing green Birdie Icon).
Twitter.com Proxy - When a posted Tweet fails due to Twitter.com being unavailable your Tweet will be stored for an attempted automated re-delivery.
Second Life location information is stored for each posted Tweet from within Second Life enabling you to use our Users Area to view interactive SL Maps of your SL Twittering.

SLTweets HUD Tagging and Notes (For research and more):

These features available by simply wearing the HUD and Tagging and Noting. Twitter.com account not required.

Save Tag’s for places you have visited or people you have met. (Ex. /123 tag convention center, nice build, ITE)
Save private Notes for places you visited, people you have met, shops or builds of interest, products, reminders or any other kind of personal note. (Ex. /123 note Great store, nice products, very low lag)
Second Life location information is stored for each Tag and Note made from within Second Life enabling you to use our Users Area to view interactive SL Maps of your SL Tags and Notes.

Additional SLTweets HUD features:

In-World Search - Search your posted Tweets, Tag’s and Notes from within Second Life.
Search results displayed in your chat window (Owner’s chat only), results include a Second Life Link back to the location the Tweet, Tag or Note was made.
Easy access to Users Area by saying /123 usersite.
Minimize button to shrink the HUD to a thin bar.
Completely Hide/Show the HUD while still being able to post Tweets, Notes and Tags and search.

Web based SLTweets features:

SLTweets Web Maps Beta - View your posted Tweets, Notes and Tags on an interactive SL Map.
Maps showing locations (visual map), time, type (Tweet, Note, Tag) and the content of the Tweet, Note or Tag. Source: SLTweets HUD Features and Updates

If you travel around as much as I do, you’ll have many tweets, notes and tags in your maps, and SLTweets makes it easy to search through them inside your account. You can also click on the maps that are created and add in markers that can be searched using the HUD inworld, believe me when I say this is one tool you need.

I plan on using it for the next few months and I will post a follow up of how it handles large numbers of notes and tags.

Second Life URL.

Popularity: 8%

Linden Labs has just posted notice that they are shutting the grid down to investigate a slowdown of the asset system in Second Life. The slowdown can cause you many problems inworld, including:

• Inability to save notecards

• Inability to compile scripts
• Refusal of rezzed objects to return to inventory.

They recommend that you do not rezz anything of value until they have figured out the problem and fix it.

We’re still scoping this issue, and will keep you updated as we move past diagnosis and toward resolution. Until the scope of this issue is clear, we strongly suggest you avoid rezzing or transferring valuable (no-copy) assets or L$. Source: [GRID] Shutdown Imminent.

Popularity: 7%

Lindens Labs has announced a rolling upgrade, where they restart all of the sims in order starting with the northwest corner of the grid and going north to south. You will get, or should get a five minute warning, many times I have received no warning, I assume due to lag.

This will once again be a traditional rolling upgrade, starting at the northwest corner of the world and moving from north to south in a big wave. Residents will get a 5 minute warning and can teleport to another region. Source: Rolling Upgrade on Wednesday Oct. 10th, 9am PDT (16:00 GMT)

In an update to the blog post from Second Life, the Rolling Restart is complete.

Popularity: 3%

Second Life will be down next Wednesday, August 22, 2007 from 9:00am until 11:00am SLT, the Lindens need to complete their deployment of the code they started last week. They expect it to take a couple hours, but it could go longer. They will allow logins but will use a rolling restart to allow the region’s to pick up the new code, and that should take about three hours. This will introduce the Het Grid to the system that will allow the Lindens better control over grid updates.

From one of the first announcements concerning the Het Grid,

Very soon, Linden Lab will release Second Life version 1.18.0. As Zero posted about “Message Liberation,” almost all viewer updates will be optional, so you can download them if and when you want. Message Liberation lays the groundwork for a project known as “Heterogeneous Grid,” or “Het-Grid” for short. Het-Grid will provide Second Life a smoother transition between both small and major patch releases. We have understood for a while now that by having separate beta grids, we aren’t able to fully test new releases thoroughly. With Het-Grid, we will be able to release new server versions to small areas of the Main Grid for testing. This allows Residents on the Main Grid to beta test without having to connect to a separate grid. Source: