Linden Lab and Vivox are taking the voice system down for maintenance tomorrow morning (Wednesday, 24 October) between 2AM and 3AM SLT (US Pacific) for unspecified improvements.

Could this have anything to do with the projected influx of CSI:NY fans tomorrow? It would be too coincidental to suggest otherwise. Apparently Linden Lab has been robustifying a number of subsystems, particularly the user-registration system.

Linden Lab has told us that the Second Life grid will be taken offline for a yet-to-be-announced duration between 6AM SLT (US Pacific) and Noon SLT on Wednesday, 19 September.

The work involved is primarily hardware related with a few minor bug-fixes, and a rolling restart to follow in the afternoon with a general server-side update that will include more fixes. As yet, no information is available as to what bugs are to be fixed or changes to be made. Since the decoupling of viewer updates from server updates, information on changes made to the server systems with each update has been scant or absent.

The voice system is currently undergoing live maintenance until Midnight. That means service may cut out at various times in various areas. I know that some of you are inclined to say "So, just business as usual then?"

Linden Lab aren't saying what work is being done, just how long it is going to take. We assume it's the nebulous 'improvements'. The system still has a ways to go, though I know that a number of you never seem to have any difficulties with the voice system at all.

The Second Life grid is down for for approximately two hours while Linden Lab performs assorted hardware and database maintenance. It's all fairly routine, we are assured.

Later in the day, a number of updates are planned to roll out on the main grid via a rolling restart, but due to some QA issues, it's not clear at this stage what the final set of updates will consist of. We expect to hear more about that as the day progresses.

Here's wishing all of our readers an enjoyable two hour interstice and a minimum of hassles.

There have been oodles of reports about voice issues today. The talk session with Biz Stone (of Twitter) at Dr Dobbs Island had to revert from voice to text today when the voice system simply failed to perform.

Linden Lab are announcing a short-notice maintenance downtime for the voice system in a few hours, from 2AM SLT (US Pacific) to 3AM SLT. Sunday's voice performance after the last maintenance downtime was reportedly much improved, but reports are that it has significantly degraded since then.

Linden Lab says the voice system will be undergoing maintenance from 2AM SLT (US Pacific) to 4AM SLT on Sunday morning, 5 August. Voice services won't be available during that time.

You might wonder how that differs, exactly, from Friday morning's voice outages. Well, it'll be down for less time for one thing, and this time you'll be expecting it, right?

The support portal is going down for maintenance again (for what is hoped is the last maintenance downtime on a weekend) from 6PM Saturday SLT (US Pacific) to 2AM Sunday SLT (7-8 July).

That's no support tickets, no support live-chat and no knowledge-base during this period, so try not to have any problems, okay? Concierge customers and estate managers who need rollbacks during this time will have to visit the Linden Estate Services office in virtual person to make their request.

The planned update to 1.17.0 tomorrow has been waved off, and instead will be taking place next week. We're informed that Second Life will still be offline for assorted maintenance, from 7am until 9am SLT (US Pacific).

We're told to expect the 1.17.0 update on 13 June instead, presumably in the same 6am-noon SLT timeslot that was originally planned.

Second Life is being taken down from 6am to 10am SLT (US Pacific) on Wednesday 16 May for unspecified hardware maintenance at the colocation facilities. This doesn't constitute a software update, and it is not clear what work is being done, though it may have something to do with the new data carrier.

It is not known if the beta grid will be available during the downtime window. No new software or downloads will be required after the maintenance is complete.

The Second Life grid is down for a short-notice maintenance, hopefully to fix the group messaging problems that have plagued Second Life since v1.15 was rolled out last Wednesday. The group IM problems seem to have really hit home with the community, causing grumbling and cussing like I've never heard in SL before. Even the issues with the v1.7 update didn't raise the sort of depressed ire that these glitches seem to have.

Here's hoping that Linden Lab gets this set of fixes right. A lot is hinging on it, not least their ongoing reputation. No new viewer download will be required when it comes back up in two hours. We at SLI wish you the best for the short break, and will see you on the other side.

Hot on the heels of major problems in which most or all teleportation appears to be down (also rez problems, friends list and all that), it's been announced that the update planned for Wednesday has been aborted due to unresolved issues.

Basically, there are enough problems still reported but not fixed, that the update's being given some more testing and QA time. There was other, non-update work to be performed, and that will still be going ahead. The new outage window will be from 7am to 10am on Wednesday. No alternative date for the update has been given.

There will be a grid-wide update on Wednesday, 7 March, in the accustomed 7am to 12noon window. The stated purpose of the update covers speed improvements, distributing load, reducing communications bottlenecks and the like. As usual, this is a bug-fixes and stability release, and not a new features release.

All the changes for this update are back-end features, so no new viewer download will be required. That said, you can always go grab the First Look viewer, and pretend, right?

Linden Lab reports that the grid is being taken offline for approximately one hour due to the need for emergency work on the asset servers. I'm not sure what constitutes this sort of emergency, but failing hardware would be right up there. They stress that "this is not an upgrade", so we're not sure if they mean "We're not upgrading the grid" (well, it definitely means that) or "We're not upgrading the asset servers" (We don't know if it means this).

The grid will be offline from 7am to 8am SLT December 28 (15:00-16:00 GMT for those of you more comfortable with GMT). Everyone will be logged off the Second Life grid during the maintenance period.