Avoid Scheduled Region Restarts During Japanese Prime Time (22:00–24:00 JST)
expected
Crea Shepherd
This is not a request concerning one specific region. This is a request for a permanent scheduling policy change affecting the Japanese Second Life community.
Second Life Support (Ticket #2555453) advised me to submit this request through the official Feedback Portal so that it can be considered by the appropriate team.
For many years, Region Restarts have repeatedly occurred shortly after 10:00 PM Japan Standard Time (JST). Recently, this has again become frequent, sometimes occurring on more than half of the days in a week.
10:00 PM JST is one of the most important prime-time periods for the Japanese Second Life community. A large number of clubs, DJ events, live performances, dance events, and community gatherings begin at or around this time.
When a Region Restart occurs immediately after an event begins, the entire event is interrupted. Performers, staff, and visitors are forced out of the region, and organizers may have to restart the event from the beginning.
Even if the interruption lasts only a few minutes, the impact is significant. These are organized events that people have spent considerable time preparing.
We understand that maintenance schedules may be influenced by North American operating hours and staff availability. However, Second Life is a global service, and Japanese and Asian peak-use hours should also be taken into account.
This issue has been raised before. In the past, after complaints were submitted, Restarts during this time period often decreased for several months, but eventually the same problem returned.
For that reason, we are not asking for another temporary adjustment.
We are requesting a permanent operational policy change.
Specifically, we strongly request that Linden Lab:
Avoid scheduled Region Restarts between 10:00 PM and midnight JST whenever reasonably possible.
Formally take Japanese and Asian regional peak-use hours into account when planning maintenance schedules.
Establish a scheduling policy that avoids routine maintenance and Region Restarts during major regional prime-time periods.
We are not asking Linden Lab to delay emergency maintenance, security-related work, or Restarts required to address serious technical problems.
However, routine maintenance and scheduled Region Restarts should not repeatedly occur during one of the busiest periods for the Japanese Second Life community.
The Japanese Second Life community has supported and participated in Second Life for many years. Repeated disruption of its main event hours by routine operational scheduling is extremely frustrating and increasingly difficult to accept.
Please do not treat this as an isolated issue affecting one particular region. This is a scheduling and operational policy issue.
If you are a Second Life resident in Japan or elsewhere in Asia and have experienced event disruption caused by Region Restarts around 10:00 PM JST, please support this request.
We sincerely hope Linden Lab will consider a permanent improvement rather than another temporary reduction in 10:00 PM JST Restarts.
Log In
Crea Shepherd
Dear Second Life Feedback Moderation Team,
I am following up on my October 18 inquiry. Thank you to everyone who has supported this request with 38 votes and thoughtful comments.
Our discussion has shown that this is not only a Japanese prime-time issue. It concerns fair, predictable region restarts for all Mainland residents, regardless of time zone. I therefore propose broadening the title and scope to:
“Fair Restart Scheduling for Mainland”
Before opening a separate request, could you please clarify:
- Can this request be renamed and expanded while retaining its 38 votes and discussion history?
- If a new request is required, how can we preserve or carry forward that support without splitting the community's efforts?
I also ask Linden Lab to consider an unintended consequence. If a new request is necessary, I intend to seek support from club owners, event organizers, and commercial venue operators across Second Life. During that outreach, groups unfamiliar with preventive region restarts using tools such as Boxy may discover the option and begin using it to protect their own activities.
If many groups do so, individually reasonable decisions could collectively disrupt other events and residents, making Mainland less predictable.
What kind of world would Second Life become if all of us—club owners, event organizers, and commercial venue operators—began restarting our regions preventively to protect our own activities?
This is not a threat or an encouragement to restart regions unnecessarily. It is a warning about the potential consequences of relying on individual preventive measures rather than a coordinated, fair restart policy.
We seek no special treatment for Club ELFIN or Japanese residents. We seek a fairer and more predictable Mainland for everyone. I hope we can build on the existing discussion rather than start over.
Thank you for your guidance and consideration.
Respectfully,
Crea Shepherd
Club ELFIN
Crea Shepherd
To the Second Life Feedback Moderation Team,
I am the author of this Feature Request, which has received 38 votes of support. Thank you to everyone who has supported it.
Since submitting this request, further incidents and discussions with Linden Lab Support have led to a broader proposal: an
Event Protection Request
mechanism to help protect scheduled community events from nonessential region restarts.Before submitting a separate Feature Request, I would like to ask whether the existing post could be expanded and retitled to include this new proposal, while preserving its 38 votes, comments, and current status.
If the two proposals should remain separate because they address different causes of region restarts, could you advise whether there is a way to link them formally or otherwise preserve the support and context already gathered here?
I do not wish to change the meaning of the votes already cast without appropriate consideration.
Thank you for your guidance.
Crea Shepherd
Club ELFIN
Crea Shepherd
Urgent Follow-up: October 9, 2026 — Two Region Restarts During Club ELFIN's 18th Anniversary Party
I would like to report another serious incident.
Date: Friday, October 9, 2026
Time: Shortly after 22:00 JST
Regions: Mimolette and Enoki (Mainland)
Tonight, Club ELFIN began celebrating its 18th anniversary, marking 18 years since its founding in October 2008.
Almost immediately after our anniversary party began at 22:00 JST, the usual yellow Region Restart warnings appeared in both Mimolette, where our main dance floor is located, and Enoki, where our alternative event area is located.
Both regions actually restarted. They have since come back online.
This is not an isolated observation.
On Friday, September 25, 2026, we experienced almost the same situation, with both Mimolette and Enoki restarting at approximately 23:05 JST.
We have now documented two Friday-night incidents affecting the same two regions during Japanese prime time.
I am not suggesting that these restarts were deliberately targeted at Club ELFIN. However, the repeated timing and involvement of both regions raise serious concerns about the reliability of Mainland regions for live community events.
I respectfully request that Linden Lab investigate the simulator restart logs for both Mimolette and Enoki on September 25 and October 9, 2026.
Could Linden Lab please clarify:
What triggered these restarts?
Were they initiated by Linden Lab operations, resident-requested restart mechanisms such as Boxy, or another cause?
Why were two neighboring regions affected at approximately the same time?
Can measures be taken to prevent avoidable restarts during Japanese prime time, especially on Friday and Saturday nights?
Our intention is not to assign blame, but to understand the cause and find a practical solution.
For Club ELFIN and other communities hosting live events, predictable region availability is essential.
Thank you for your attention and consideration.
Crea Shepherd
I would like to add another documented observation.
Date:
Friday, September 25, 2026 Time:
approximately 23:05 JST Region 1:
Mimolette (Mainland) — home of the Club ELFIN main floor Region 2:
Enoki (Mainland) — home of the ELFIN Island beachAt approximately 23:05 JST, the usual yellow Region Restart warning appeared in Mimolette.
Because of the warning, we evacuated from the Club ELFIN main floor in Mimolette to the ELFIN Island beach in the nearby Enoki region.
However, the usual yellow Region Restart warning also appeared in Enoki at approximately the same time, and Enoki was restarted as well.
So, on this occasion, we observed restart warnings followed by restarts affecting two separate Mainland regions — Mimolette and Enoki — at approximately the same time on a Friday night in Japan.
I am reporting this as an observation only and am not assuming what initiated these restarts.
Since Oatmeal Linden previously explained that regular scheduled maintenance takes place on Tuesday/Wednesday mornings Pacific Time, could Linden Lab please clarify whether these Friday-night restarts can be identified as:
- a Linden Lab operational restart,
- a resident-requested/Boxy restart,
- or another type of restart?
The near-simultaneous restart of Mimolette and Enoki is particularly important for us. When Mimolette restarts during an event, moving residents to a neighboring region has been our practical emergency measure. If the neighboring region also restarts at approximately the same time, that refuge does not work.
Thank you. I will continue documenting these occurrences.
Crea Shepherd
Thank you, Oatmeal Linden, for the clarification.
I understand that Linden Lab’s regular grid maintenance is normally scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday mornings in Pacific Time so that staff can monitor the process and respond if problems occur.
However, the repeated restarts that prompted this request appear to be different from those regular rolling restarts.
The region in question, Mimolette, is a Mainland region. The restarts I have personally observed have frequently occurred shortly after 22:00 JST on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, not only during the usual Tuesday/Wednesday maintenance window.
Importantly, these have not appeared to be sudden crashes. Advance restart warnings have been displayed each time.
For that reason, I do not want to assume the cause. I am now recording the exact date, time, warning message, and actual restart time whenever this occurs.
If these events are not part of the regular Tuesday/Wednesday rolling restart schedule, I would be grateful if Linden Lab could clarify what process may be initiating them on Mainland regions.
My broader concern remains the same: when routine or intentional restarts repeatedly occur during a regional evening prime-time period, they can significantly disrupt scheduled events.
Thank you again for taking the time to respond. I hope the additional observations will help distinguish between regular grid maintenance, other operational restarts, and possible resident-initiated restart mechanisms.
Oatmeal Linden
updated the status to
expected
Hello Crea! Thanks for the feedback on our grid maintenance schedule. We apologize if the scheduling is inconvenient for your events.
We attempt to provide messaging to our community regarding our regular maintenance at https://status.secondlifegrid.net/ Maintenance occurs on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings Pacific U.S. Time, when staff is present to monitor for any issues.
KenTasogare Suki
Yes, I agree
Crea Shepherd
Thank you, Phil. I think your suggestion is very interesting, and possibly even more practical than using one global minimum-concurrency window.
If Linden Lab can measure actual usage patterns on a per-region basis over 7 or 30 days, then routine restart timing could potentially be based on when that particular region is normally least active.
That would avoid forcing one global schedule on regions whose residents may have very different usage patterns.
I also think this could work well together with selectable restart windows for Private Regions, while Mainland regions could be handled automatically by Linden Lab based on measured activity.
The important principle, in my view, is that routine restarts should be scheduled using actual usage data rather than repeatedly falling into the same regional prime-time period.
Thank you for helping move this discussion toward a more practical solution.
Crea Shepherd
Thank you, Aletta. Your distinction between Linden Lab’s scheduled rolling restarts and Estate-owner scheduled restarts is very important.
In my case, the region where Club ELFIN is located, Mimolette, is on Mainland. The restarts I am concerned about frequently occur shortly after 22:00 JST on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, rather than only during the usual Tuesday/Wednesday rolling restart schedule.
Importantly, these are not sudden crashes. We receive advance restart warnings each time.
Because of your comment, I do not want to assume the cause. I am now going to record the exact date, time, warning message, and actual restart time whenever this happens.
Once I have enough observations, I hope we can distinguish more clearly whether these are official rolling restarts, another Linden Lab operational process, or something else.
I think establishing the facts first will make this discussion much more useful.
Thank you again for pointing out this distinction.
AlettaMondragon Resident
Crea Shepherd Since there are no rolling restarts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and since it's Mainland, it is possible that someone restarts it at those times through Boxy the support bot. Mainland regions can be restarted by Premium users once a day with Boxy, when it's not broken it will just restart the region.
However it is also possible that the region crashes and restarts, but in that case nobody gets a restart warning while in the region, everyone in the region just gets disconnected.
If you don't see a restart warning before the region goes down, you might want to check things rezzed at the club that have timers in them. For example games that have a cooldown. I've seen this at a few places lately that the region goes through a "soft crash" (so it restarts immediately), but timers in scripts lose up to 2 hours 30 minutes time somehow, even though the region was offline only for a few minutes. If this happens there, or simply no restart warning and everyone gets disconnected, you should contact Support about this and also file abuse reports shortly after the region went down.
Since you said you always get the restart warning, the most likely scenario is that someone uses Boxy to restart the region. If you restart it with Boxy before your events begin, others won't be able to restart it (because of the one restart per day limit), so this could solve the problem entirely.
AlettaMondragon Resident
Scheduled rolling restarts from LL are once a week, Tuesday for Main Server Channel regions and Wednesday for Release Candidate regions, rolling restarts on any other day are very rare and only happen if there was some major issue in the previously rolled out simulator version that needs a rollback or a hotfix.
You might have noticed this not happening every week for some time a few years ago, because LL decided not to do rolling restarts when they didn't roll out new code and if the regions had been restarted less than a month ago. Pretty sure the reason for this was the constant complaining by certain people that restarts disrupt this and that. The consequences of this were
disastrous
in the sense that regions became inaccessible, they acted like they were different regions, teleports and region crossings failed, sim ping and script lag went up, and all they needed to solve these issues was a restart
.If you're so worried about a disruption in your events, the lack of regular region restarts is a far more annoying disruption, beccause then you might end up with your performers and guests not being able to enter the region the whole day instead of those 5 to 30 minutes.
You mentioned restarts every day in a comment. If your region restarts every day at the same time, that has nothing to do with LL, but the estate owner scheduled daily restarts for the region. You have to ask the estate owner to schedule a different time for that region.
WolfGang Senizen
AlettaMondragon Resident I could see an argument for, maybe changing the no update restart policy to include,
if region hasn't been restarted in past 24 hours
.That would let private region owners set their restart time to an appropriate point within 24 hours before scheduled restarts, and resolve part of the issue.
Restarts with updates, are a whole different ball game though, and much less flexible, as has been mentioned.
AlettaMondragon Resident
WolfGang Senizen That was a thing actually, and I believe it still is, if you restarted the region within 24 hours before the rolling restarts and there is no new simulator version to roll out, it won't restart. This worked a few years ago, not sure now.
WolfGang Senizen
AlettaMondragon Resident I mean if that still works, then this is mostly an problem of documentation and awareness.
Mainland regions would still be lame for some users, but that's less controllable, as they are shared spaces anyway.
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