Regions upgraded

All Red Dragon regions (including the currently offline v8 Build) have been upgraded to the latest & greatest version of Opensimulator.  The old builds will remain offline, as i simply don't have enough RAM to keep all up & running.  The server runs triple channel RAM, which is ridiculously expensive compared to normal RAM, so upgrading is not really an option. I will have to save up some cash for a new Main-board / CPU / RAM ). Mean whilst i do keep all regions "up to speed" so i can boot them at my leisure.

This morning i attended a party in Littlefield Grid, which had it's 2nd anniversary. They have a small but lively community of friends, and occasionally i try to pop in. (only when they go to bed real late, and i get up real early. ( Most of LFG's inhabitants are US residents, whereas i am in Europe. Meaning they generally sleep when i'm awake and vice versa). If you want to peek around,  LFgrid is reachable via hypergrid through the region "Littlefield Gateway" in OSgrid.

Loads of stuff is happening again, since OSgrid is back alive. Apart from a whole range of "lost friends" that found their way back, a lot of new regions came live. You can find many of them in the Wright Plaza Travel Centre if you like to visit any, and if you happen to be a sim host, you can submit your own regions there as well.

Also the splash screens of OSgrid changed, and they display an array of nice locations now for you to visit. (Hurrah, we made it to the front page too !).  To all people running an older version of opensimulator ( anything below verion 0.8 ) i urgently suggest you read this article. And upgrade ASAP.

(* sorry for the shabby images, when exporting them they get crooked dimensions, and I didn't feel like snapping the pictures again. Looks better "live" anyways, so feel free to visit us in the OSgrid.). 

Region restarts & Opensimworld

Since the lines here got upgraded a while ago, Red Dragon had a small "spontaneous" party with some friends from LBSA plaza. The regions performed surprisingly well, no lag, no crashes, which is remarkable for a region as "stuffed" as RD.

This weekend Red Dragons regions have been restarted several times due to maintenance on the network its hosted in. The internal network has now been switched to gigabit, as it's upstream router was replaced. For region performance it doesn't make a whole bunch of difference, but downloads have improved a factor 5 in speed, and WiFi is performing much better which is nice for all the phones and tablets. Was bit of a bummer finding out the latest firmware on it didn't have NAT loopback support (WTF !) but loading a different firmware fixed the issue and so all is up and running fine.

There is a new advertising system for hypergrid connected  simulators on opensimworld. It also lists events in any of the 323 known worlds straight on their homepage. Sim owners can create an account there, place a marker at their place, and add their region. Find their FAQ here to find out how the system works, and what the service has to offer. In case you'd like to show your support, Red Dragon is listed under this profile.

Update & Aftermath

Whilst the OSgrid admins are chewing away at fixing broken assets, they also pushed out a new version of the simulator today. You can grab it Here. I have been online quite a bit last week, and seen a lot of faces in OSgrid. Some new, and many older friends popped in and found themselves at LBSA's spontaneous party's, and mostly everyone is happy to be "Back Home" as that's what OSgrid means to a lot of us.

Most users suffer very little problems from the recovery, their homes have been brought online again, 99% of inventor is still where they left it. The stress of "losing all your stuff" without having a decent backup must have been a headache for some. They didn't loose all though, due to a lot of time and effort of the admin/dev team, and OSG's ability to purchase specialized recovery services. Which in it's turn would not have been possible without its users.

So if you are an OSGrid resident, can afford it, and you appreciate having your stuff back, or you are extremely happy with the services as provided, consider a donation. Even if it's small, or maybe just enough to buy some hardworking dev a beer or pack of smokes, its appreciated. OSG is likely to be low on funding after the recovery bill, and especially now all is back and improv(ed/ing) again, they can use the extra love. 102902 OSG users (that 102903rd is you) will be grateful for your support.

Next Friday, Dorothea and Jaymaze will resume their weekly Friday party's at Close Encounter region in OSgrid.  This was announced last Friday at the "final" party in metropolis grid. I think i can speak on behalf of many, when i sincerely thank our friends in Metropolis (and all other grids providing refuge to me and many friends) for their hospitality and support in the "dark winter" of 2014. That's all for now, back to riding the waves of the "complete" Metaverse some more.

Regions upgraded

Since OSG came back after the short maintenance outage i have upgraded all the online regions to the latest OSG build of 21-02-2015.  I did use my previous INI files, instead of the recommended manual comparison, but will take a long hard look at them when i feel like it later this week.  For now, all appears to work ok, and i try to refrain from "fixing" stuff that isn't broken. The V8 build is down, as there is not enough RAM on my current machine to run all 20 regions. They all have successfully booted so i know they still work, but will remain offline until further notice.

The online regions all run smoothly on their good old MySQL instance, despite me reading somewhere on G+ that the MySQL part in open simulator is not longer maintained, as none of the OSG developers use it any longer. This could eventually affect peoples configurations, and since there are no "release notes" i can only recommend to keep a close look at your .ini files and use Postgre or possibly MariaDB should MySQL fail for whatever reason.

From a user point of view, i experience very little impact of the data crash. Sometimes a message that some texture / script in inventory cannot be found is pretty much the worst i have seen, which is amazing on itself after a disaster causing nearly 6 months of downtime.  Anyways, it's great to have OSgrid alive and kicking again. (And to see all you "oldies" at LBSA).

Tonight, it's party time in Metropolis. D&J's "Close Encounter" region in OSGrid  apparently still needs some love before it can re-open and we can party there, so they will stick to Metropolis for this weeks event.