This issue is now resolved, and items from the message history are delivered promptly again.

[UPDATE 3 - JUN 9th, 2008 11:30PM PST]

Just a quick update to let you know this problem with the message history is still happening. I’ve opened the support ticket with Linden Labs and a bug report has also been filed. This issue is also affecting several in-world vendors, SLExchange, and a lot of other external apps. You can track or vote for the issue at http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2462.

[UPDATE 2 - JUN 7th, 2008 02:30AM PST]

Effects from the yesterday’s Second Life network outages seem to have cleared, although some deliveries from the message history are still very slow while your Controllers are catching up on overloaded queues from the last few days.

[UPDATE 1]

Second Life is currently experiencing severe network problems. Please do not try to send any important messages until they post an all clear.

Current grid stability issues, service interruptions and rolling restarts are currently affecting item deliveries from the message history - sometimes it might take up to a few minutes for the item to deliver, some deliveries might also be failing.

Even though normal message and item deliveries (if you send a message to your group) shouldn’t be affected, please not that some of your members might not receive the message in case they are in a problematic region, or their region is in the middle of a rolling restart or updating.

If you have an important message, I suggest you wait until the current rolling restart cycle is over.

I will post an update once the message history is working reliably and without issues again - until then, your members will receive a short note about the issue whenever they request a past item from the message history.

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

If you planned on sending any messages in the next few hours, I advise to wait until the upgrades are complete, just in case.

[UPDATE]

The upgrades are complete, and there were no outages. Yay

Downtime is due to electrical systems maintenance at the data center where Subscribe-O-Matic server is located - click here for more information.

I apologize in advance for the inconvenience.

[UPDATE: 06:00 AM PST on 12/01/07]

Maintenance at the data center is complete and everything is running smoothly

Subscribers are getting a notice about this issue when they access the message history through your kiosks. The notice also asks your subscribers not to message you about it.

So far the support ticket has gotten no response from Linden Lab, but I’m hoping this will be resolved as soon as possible. In addition, we are working on an upgrade that will hopefully make Subscribe-O-Matic unaffected by similar Second Life issues in the future.

I will update this post as soon as there are any changes. I’m really sorry for the inconvenience.

[UPDATE: 02:00 AM PST on 11/29/07]

This has been resolved with the last region restarts. Item re-deliveries from the message history should now be working without a problem. It might take a while for the pending queue to clear though, so for the time being the notice for subscribers will still be displayed, whenever they access the message history.

[UPDATE: 06:20 AM PST on 11/29/07]

The support ticked submitted to Linden Lab was also just closed with this reply:

I am sorry for the inconvenience which happened to you. But due to a misconfiguration mails were stuck in a queue, after the rolling restart of 11/28 the error has been resolved. Unfortunately the emails before the restart are being bounced as a result.

The item re-deliveries from the message history have been working without a problem for the last few hours, so I’m also removing the notice for the subscribers.

Subscribe-O-Matic kiosks and devices in-world are not affected by this maintenance in any way.

The Subscribe-O-Matic service is not affected by this, so your kiosks should be online and working without a problem. Any messages sent during the time the website is offline will also be visible in the message history and the RSS feeds once the website is back online.

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

If you were about to send a message, I suggest waiting until this issue is resolved.

I’m really sorry for the inconvenience.

[UPDATE: 10:33 AM PST on 10/01/07]
MediaTemple system engineers have identified the latency issue, and are already investigating and working on resolving it as fast as possible.

The service will go offline at the same time as Second Life (currently planned for 6AM PST or 13:00 GMT for those in Europe) and will be back online as soon as the DNS changes propagate around the net. This might take everywhere to a few hours to around 24 hours, but from experience, it rarely takes more than 12 hours.

If Second Life downtime will be canceled or rescheduled, we will also reschedule the Subscribe-O-Matic server move accordingly.

[UPDATE: 10:46 AM PST on 09/19/07]

The server move is completed, but it will take a bit more for the the DNS records to propagate around the globe. The website might already be online for some of you though.

[UPDATE: 04:03 PM PST on 09/19/07]

Some of the kiosks around Second Life have already started to come back online, which means the DNS changes are already reaching the Second Life grid. I’m expecting the rest of the kiosks will able to connect to the new server in the next 2-4 hours.

[UPDATE: 01:21 AM PST on 09/20/07]
While the website should already be reachable for most of you, the DNS changes still haven’t reached all Second Life servers yet, so quite a few of your kiosks are still offline. They should be coming back online through out the night and most of them should be operational before noon.

They are an old player in the hosting business based in Los Angeles, CA and have been in business since 1998.  They host some high traffic sites like techcrunch.com (curently over 605,000 people are subscribed just to their RSS feed) and well known brands like Starbucks, Sony, Diesel and others.

Their uptime is impressive and their scalable virtual server hosting will allow us to increase our resources as the Subscribe-O-Matic service grows.

I’m already preparing for the move, and I’m expecting we will make the switch somewhere around September 10th. I will try to make the move as smooth as possible for everyone, but there might be a few hours of downtime, and messaging will be disabled until the DNS changes propagate (which means you probably won’t be able to send a message for about 24 hours, but it’s usually much quicker than this).

If you have an active Subscribe-O-Matic subscription, I would suggest that you bookmark this site, or subscribe to the RSS feed, since I will be keeping you updated on the progress when the main site will go offline for the move.

[UPDATE: 10:33 PM PST on 08/25/07]

All done! The recent item (and gift) deliveries are re-enabled and working

I’m happy to announce we have begun updating the server with the changes for 1.7 version. If all goes well (which of course, it will - upgrades always go as planned, I’m sure we all agree on that one), you shouldn’t feel a thing, and all your kiosks should continue working. I would suggest to maybe wait an hour or two, if you wanted to send a message to your subscribers though.

After we update the server, you will be able to pick up the new Subscribe-O-Matic v1.7 package from our in-world location. The changes and updates for v1.7 will be announced on the main site in a few hours

Oh and by the way, your old kiosks and controllers will of course still work after this upgrade, you will just need the new ones to use all the new cool features

[UPDATE: 7:00 PM PST on 08/24/07]

All done! More information about the cool new features on the main site!

It seems our hosting provider didn’t manage to completely resolve the connectivity issues, so the Subscribe-O-Matic service is still experiencing some slowdowns and temporary few minute outages. We are very sorry for the inconvenience - I understand that every temporary outage means less potential subscribers in your Subscribe-O-Matic groups, so I’m also actively working on minimizing those as much as possible, currently with two planned changes (planned for August):

• We added a backup server, that will be used so the kiosks will still be able to accept new subscribers even in cases when the main server is unreachable - we are planning to implement that functionality in the next update,
• we will move the main Subscribe-O-Matic service to a more reliable provider by the end of August.

Our hosting provider is experiencing some connectivity issues which is causing parts of their network to be inaccessible, including the server that hosts the Subscribe-O-Matic service and website. They are actively working on the issue and expect to have it resolved soon. You don’t need to do anything - your kiosks will come back online automatically, and you will be able to send messages as soon as led indicator on your Controller turns green again. We are very sorry for the inconvenience.

• it lists updates and notices about the status of Synthetik services, like Subscribe-O-Matic,
• since it’s ona a separatate webserver (hosted by EuroVPS in Europe), you will be able to check the status of the services in cases were our main webserver has problems, and you can’t access the main website,
• it will act as a backup server that will accept subscriptions to your Subscribe-O-Matic groups, even in cases where the main server has connectivity problems, or the service is offline (for maintenance or upgrades for example).

If you have an active Subscribe-O-Matic account or use any of our other services, we recommend that you bookmark this site, or subscribe to the RSS feed, since that way you will be able to get notified of any potential problems, and will also be able to check the status of any of our services, even in extreme cases when our main website is offline or unreachable.