Login Difficulties

On Saturday afternoon, I was invited to a formal party, and showed up at 5 PM. At 5:15 PM, Second Life suddenly seized up and crashed on me, the "view IMs or quit" window prominently displayed. It had been happening to me a little more than usual lately, so I relogged. Trying to get back in, I got a message saying that I couldn't log in, saying there was a problem with the clock. Confused, I tried again. Same result.

I waited a while, and tried again, with no luck. Finally after several tries I checked the SL Blog, and found the following:

Login Difficulties

[5:15PM Pacific] We’re currently experiencing an issue with logins. You may see a message that indicates you cannot log in due to the system clock being set incorrectly. As a temporary workaround, setting your computer clock to Pacific Standard Time should allow you to login.

We’re working on resolving this issue as quickly as possible and will post here with updates.

I decided to try one more time before resetting my clock to California time, and it worked! Well, sort of. I was a cloud, and the voice and sound were gone. Just about everyone else was cloudy too. It was soon clear others were having problems. Many of the others were gone, and the hostess was putting up the Internet address for the music stream so people could hear it outside the SL client, humbly apologizing to everyone for the trouble.

I waited a few minutes for the cloud to fade. It soon did, but I got a bit of a shock. It seems SL had lost most of my fox avatar, leaving me a shape I hadn't seen for a long while. I'd been "ruthed" for the first time in well over a year, the look so familiar to long-time residents.

Others at the party had lost items too, such as jewelry. Someone suggested that I clear cache and relog. I did so, and coming back, was able to become a foxy guy again, much to my relief (and the others around me and in IM).

Leaving the place after the party, I got my sound and voice back. Though as so often these days, things still could take a while to load due to the lag.

The metaverse thrown out of wack because of a clock? Something seems a bit "cuckoo."

Bixyl Shuftan

Post Christmas Grid blues

Each year, after the Christmas gifts have been unwrapped and all those people who treated themselves or family to new computers/Internet access, Secondlife sees a surge of new signups and more people using it than ever - the problem with that?
Quite simply the grid cannot handle it!
Most of us who spend regular time inworld are aware of the issues and mostly what is behind it - basically once the grid reaches 75k+ online everything goes down the toilet - teleports, transactions, rezzing, building even dressing becomes problematic.

Lets have a look at the last few days:

[RESOLVED] Logins and In-world Issues

Posted by Status Desk on January 6th, 2009 at 10:45 am PST

[Resolved 10:45am PST] - The database has recovered and all issues have been resolved.

[10:30am PST] - We are currently experiencing a problem with the database. There may be difficulties with logging in, rezzing objects, completing transactions, and searching. We are aware of this issue and our ops team are working to resolve it as swiftly as possible. In the mean time, please avoid making important transactions or rezzing no-copy objects.

[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues/Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 6th, 2009 at 04:10 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 7th, 2009 at 02:58 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 8th, 2009 at 01:34 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Logins Disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 10th, 2009 at 01:54 pm PST
[RESOLVED] Logins Disabled and Inworld Issues
Posted by Status Desk on January 10th, 2009 at 04:53 pm PST
[RESOVLED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 11th, 2009 at 11:20 am PST
[RESOLVED] Logins disabled
Posted by Status Desk on January 13th, 2009 at 03:39 pm PST

Each of these represents times when Logins have been restricted, a black week for any Secondlife business.
Some have called for allowing only premium accounts to log in at these times and yet others slam this notion as many who would like to go premium cannot do so, therefore making the idea unjust.
Then there is the question of bot activity, if as Linden Lab numbers suggest, 10% of those signed in are bots then surely shutting these out would allow real players more of a chance to log in?
But how do we or Linden Lab know which accounts are bots?
Age old question and one many have tried to answer - but to be honest our answers do not matter Linden Lab will do what Linden Lab chooses as always.
I am not technically minded but even I can see the grid is struggling - Linden Lab says 10% bots - most believe that is a very conservative estimate it is more likely to be around 25 - 30%. Now how about if the bots were registered? Then when the Grid is struggling bots are logged out? Wouldn't that make more sense than locking out paying Residents? Even those who run bots would rather have paying Residents inworld than their bots surely?
Hopefully with all the grid issues Linden Lab will finally make a move on the traffic scam that causes most to use bots - once the reason for them is gone it will make the need for bots redundant. But for now Linden Lab have chosen to chase their tails and deal with issues as they arise rather than dealing with the root cause (as always).

Dana Vanmoer

For your information

We are seeing difficulties with logging in at present and are currently investigating this. More information when we have it.
Apologies for any inconvenience this is causing.

I also have reports of huge problems in world - blank inventory, no teleport, no friends list etc.....
NOT a good day for Secondlife lets hope its sorted out soon.

Dana

Lets see if we can log in tonight?

As we reported earlier this month, tonight CSI:NY comes to secondlife but I think for regular SLers the question isn't who committed murder but whether the grid can handle the extra logins predicted;

440 new sims created, 150k new resident log ins predicted! Regular users know that at the 50k peek the grid has numerous problems - How can the grid handle this huge spike? According to LL they have spent some time 'beefing up the registration, login and inventory servers' Why does it take a TV/media circus for them to do this when regular users have been complaining for months of the problems in these areas?

Lets hope some of this 'beefing up' also helps regular users!

The new users will login with a client created for this event by the Electric Sheep Company and will go through orientation through the CSI orientation islands 208 of them!

Considering the sim prices, the overall cost for these islands tops $700,000USD, it is hoped they won't end up ghost towns after the first flurry of excitement - Yes I do love CSI and love the fact that they have come into SL but like other big companies that have spent out on it I personally hope they don't fade into SL memory like the many other RL companies I could list here.

You can see a quick glimpse of the upcoming events planned on Utube here and here

Lets just hope I can log in tonight!