In case you missed the email or the notification on social media, we have moved the contents, and archives of this Blog to https://osgrid.online . We have not exported the user profiles. If you want to be kept up to date on OSgrid, alerts, maintenance, grid events, and other news, you can subscribe to the new website.
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This page will remain here but will no longer be actively kept up to date.
Merry Christmas and all the best for 2024.
We’re going to work on the OSgrid infrastructure a bit in 2024. This will involve some downtime. Our back end admins are working on the new machine that will replace the current grid server. Web development is working on updating the website. Also this Blog will get a refresh. With the big spread of communication platforms, and various services demanding logins, we chose to keep our important updates just here, publicly on the web, all in one place.
As this is a test post, i will not bug you with an update via email. If you’re subscribed, no worries, you will be notified if something relevant is at hand. Older posts will be moved to archives and remain available.
On behalf of the OSgrid Team, we wish you a merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a wonderful 2024.
Hello again everyone, I just wanted to post this notice that this new version is safe to use on OSgrid, this new version contains some of the newest OpenSimulator fixes but still remains compatible with the current state of OSgrid, please note this upgrade is not required, but if your interested in trying out a somewhat newer version of OpenSimulator on OSgrid then give it a go, and please report any issues you find to IRC or the Web Chat on the main website, forums and also Mantis.
Download New version here: http://www.osgrid.org/elgg/pg/utilities/software
Hello again everyone, I bring more news about the refactoring process. First let me start by stressing how important it is you do not update your regions past todays new release posted on OSgrid.org website. This is the last working version prior to the Refactoring, of which no one should attempt to go beyond at this point. Be aware that if you upgrade, there is no easy downgrading and you will find yourself rebuilding your sims from backups, or if your were not wise enough to do backups, starting over from scratch to get it back on OSgrid. So please, PLEASE! always do backups before upgrading, but in this case do not go past the revision posted on the website until we announce it is safe to do so.
In terms of the refactoring process, we have begun testing on a small test grid that is not currently accessible to the public, but the Administrators are doing their best to iron out the many kinks that have come from such drastic changes to the core software code. We ask everyone please be patient, and if you have the time help the developers to debug issues with the new grid software. If you are able we need people to setup their own mini test grids locally and see what kind of bugs you can shake loose. We have a long road ahead until we can actually pull the trigger for OSgrid and move on, but until then please be patient and if you have any questions or would like to become more involved, just visit our IRC chat rooms or the web chat on the main website (irc.freenode.net – #osgrid – #opensim – #opensim-dev). Thanks everyone and keep checking back for more details soon.
Nebadon Izumi
Hello everyone,
I wanted to give everyone one some notice on the upcoming server refactoring everyone has been hearing about. According to Melanie and Diva, the coding is complete on their server changes. This means several things for OSgrid, not all of which i will discuss right now, we are currently formulating plans on how to proceed forward. We ask that you all bear with us while we do some testing behind the scenes to prepare for all of these changes, some are drastic, some you wont even notice at all. Likely in the coming weeks you will see changes to the website and the simulator software, but we will do our best to help everyone prepare and step through it.
That is about all i can say for right now, but in the mean time its best to not update past the current OSgrid release version, or anything you are currently running today prior to GIT REV a9580ebb496637323548b75c2bda605790b18a6b (r/12335) as this version is the no longer compatible with OSgrid until we can complete the back end updates.
If you have any questions you can visit our web chat or IRC channel at irc.freenode.net #osgrid
~Nebadon Izumi
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EDIT: This maintenance was successfully completed. –coyled
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Hello. As Adam mentioned a couple of posts ago, thanks to generous user donations OSGrid has a shiny new asset server ready to go into service. This will bring our asset storage capacity from 1TB to 3.5TB, and decrease the grid’s recurring monthly operational costs.
Most of the assets have already been sync’d to the new machine, but we’ll have to take the asset server offline to do one final sync before flipping the switch. This maintenance window is now scheduled for:
You can also go to http://tr.im/KwqN and convert that time into your local time zone.
All other grid services will remain up during this time, though the user experience will be degraded as sims will be unable to upload or retrieve uncached assets. After the conclusion of the maintenance, it’s recommended that region operators restart their regions.
Further status information will be posted to http://twitter.com/osgrid
No configuration change is required on your end.
Apologies for the inconvenience, thank you for your patience during this upgrade, and thanks for using OSGrid.
-coyled
First i want to apologize to everyone for todays and this weeks downtimes and Inventory issues, it appears that time has caught up with us here at OSgrid. After 2.5 years of virtually no cleanup or maintenance on our inventory tables, it seems the cruft just finally built up to much.
Todays downtime was a result of much of that build up bringing things to a grinding halt, so after all this time the big clean up finally took place. Thanks to Melanie and her awesome ability to peer into the database and see what was wrong, spent the last few hours fixing and cleaning the entire table.
So please everyone thank Melanie Milland, and everyone who helped her and the rest of the team get through this ordeal, I would like to thank the grid admins and devs, including Adam Frisby, Hiro Protagonist, Adelle Fitzgerald and Dave Coyle as well for also helping and contributing to getting through this insanity. Thanks to WhiteStar Magic and others on the IRC and everyone who helped out on Lbsa Plaza, there are just too many to mention everyone, you are all great people and this grid could not function without any of you. (I am sorry if i forgot anyone its only because my brain is so scrambled right now :).
Please log back into the grid and check your inventory and report anything that seems odd to our team. Thanks again everyone.
ok folks, sorry about take 2 on the outage but we realized after we opened the grid pretty quickly that something was still wrong, seemed people still had some duplicate folders, so Melanie once again plunged into the database to save the day, unfortunately the queries were massive and took much longer to process than we anticipated, we are sorry for this turn of events but it was ultimately necessary. Again i thank everyone for their patience in this matter and hopefully this is the last outage for a while.
Also if you find you are missing items from your root folder, be sure to check in your “Lost and Found” anything we could not properly place back should have ended up in your Lost and Found. if you have any questions please let us know.
Currently the grid is offline for some maintenance to the Inventory server, we took the grid offline to prevent any damage from occuring while we do some maintenance, please hang in there and check back soon for more updates.
Thanks largely in part to the donations we have received in the last few months, we were able to meet both of the goals we had set for this year.
I will go into more detail about what we bought in a moment – but first, I on behalf of all the OSgrid Admin team & the OSgrid Foundation (OSgrid, Inc.) would like to thank each and every one of you who donated or helped us afford these new purchases. We really do appreciate all the donations we have received – and we’ve got some great ideas for plans for next year to work out where we should grow next.
But, onto the specifics of what we bought. We bought two new identically specified machines – for those curious these are the specifications, and how much we spent:
The total is approx. $1,218 per server including the shipping & handling. Which nets us a pair of 6TB Disk, 8GB Memory, Quad-Core Xeon servers – what are we planning on putting these to?
Well the first step is we’re going to be setting up a live backup of the current “UGIM” server using replication – right now our backups are being performed as a whole dump on a regular basis – the problem here is that if we suffer a database failure, we lose all the inventory & users which was registered since the dump was taken (usually that dump is done daily now – however it could mean up to 24 hours of lost content.) — with the replicated server, if we suffer a failure, we have a backup that should be within a couple of seconds of the main database.
Having the backup also lets us perform some of the heavier database queries without affecting the performance of the grid – this includes doing our off-site backups, analytics and more. So overall grid performance might go slightly up. This new backup server will also be mirroring the assets server – hence the extended disk on both of the machines — this will allow us to switch to it with a moments notice in the event of either the primary UGIM or assets machines failing.
The second server is going to be used to replace our current assets machine – the problem with the current machine is that it’s somewhat wrongly specified for use as an asset system – it has a fast processor and plenty of memory; but very little disk space – only a single 1TB disk. While that is suiting our use right now, we don’t think it’s going to last in the medium to long term; in addition the lack of RAID is exposing us to long restore times in the event of a failure.
Both of these systems are being shipped to our sponsor & admin Dave Coyle and Knifejaw Systems who apart from being the sponsor of Plaza 04, has volunteered us some space in his server rack at a very deep discount (on top of providing one of the berths & some bandwidth for free); and he’s also volunteered to spend his time assembling & installing these machines. Thank you Dave – your help is much appreciated.
So where are we going next? Well with our 2009 goals met, we want to start both collecting some ideas, and collecting some donations to cover next years expenses – we’ve left enough money in our account to cover our operations for the next few months, but please don’t stop contributing because we met our goals – while we try and run a fairly lean operation & minimise our expenses, running the grid can be an expensive process; and we’re not joking when we say that your donations do keep us on the air. Of course – we also wish to thank everyone who helps make the grid a place to come visit – the artists, users & testers – your contributions are invaluable too.
So on behalf of all the OSgrid Admin Team – we would like to thank all our supporters, sponsors and users and wish you a very happy holidays and safe Christmas season — and thank you everyone who helped make these purchases possible.
The OSgrid Admin Team
During your time in OSgrid you will have joined in a load test of some kind, and if not you probably will do in the future. But why do we conduct load tests? The most common answer that people may think is to see how long the sim will last, or how many people we can cram into a sim before it blows, but there is much more than meets the eye when it comes to load testing. A usual load test will take place on an OSgrid operated region, mainly Wright Plaza and it basically goes along the lines of; try to fill it up, see how it feels, wait until it blows, and maybe do it again.
During the time a load test is performed, grid admins are constantly watching the server where the load test is happening, and getting a feel for how things feel and react in world. Things like memory usage, CPU usage, network bandwidth are all closely monitored, as well as seeing how it feels in world; checking for rubber-banding (where and avatar walks then snaps back), checking for sinking into the ground, pushing an avatar against a solid object to see if physics are keeping up. These are all tests that are conducted every time and a general feel is gotten for how a sim is performing. Often an OSgrid binary release is released after a load test, or not as the case may be. There are some other very important things that happen occasionally during a load test dependent upon what code has been changed or fixed in the immediate past. Not long ago several OpenSim core developers made some radical changes to the way that UDP packets (the network comms) are handled in OpenSim. Before this the stability was probably at an all time low. This required some specific tests to be carried out, but could only be done under a load. The tests were to make the sim crash, and gather information about that crash, information on processes and threads (other technical stuffs ;-)), and it was important to capture the information in a way the developers could understand it, so changes were made to the code to enable this. Whilst these tests were carried out information was handed to the developers, changes were made, load tests were repeated; wash rinse repeat, over and over for a few weeks. This enabled the developers to gain the information required to put in place the fixes to make OpenSim more stable…. and the load testing and information gathering worked!
There are other reasons for load testing such as comparing the current load test to the last load test. If a succession of load tests starts to show that OpenSim can’t handle as many avatars in the sim at the same time, it acts as a warning that OpenSim is becoming less stable, and this needs to be addressed. If it transpires that stability is the same or better, it shows that things are going well with OpenSim, and often an OSgrid binary release will be made, as we want to try and keep you as up to date as possible with OpenSim revisions on this grid, though the choice is entirely up to you whether you install a new binary or not. There is another aspect of load testing too, socialising. It’s great the way people gather, stand around, sometimes do silly things, but have fun whilst doing so. Friendly chatter and banter often is the primary focus of people when participating in a load test, it can be fun.
At the time of writing there is another load test tomorrow (Friday 27th November) at Wright Plaza. Come along and help out, have a chat, meet new people all whilst helping OSgrid and OpenSim.
OSGrid News 