The latest release of D2 (diva-r22043) includes a few new addons that are missing from the core of OpenSim, namely: Groups, Offline IM and a Terms of Service feature. I’ve waited this long to implement these, but it has finally come to a point that I can’t live without them. Groups are pretty important for access control and permissions, and it has been a battle to work without them; offline IM is convenient; and showing a Terms of Service agreement has become important to me, especially for foreign visitors.

D2 is meant to be a personal virtual world server, so some of these addons have limitations that reflect the spirit of a personal virtual world. For example, in D2 you can create at most 2 groups. I have an unlimited version of Groups, too, but that is meant for larger worlds.

Anyway, you can find all the information about these addons here. The Wifi web app has been extended with some minimal support for managing groups.

These addons are works in progress, and I will keep improving them. This is their first release to the public, so expect some hickups. Please report those issues here, but make sure to read the documentation first.

Have fun!

NOTE: This affects only Linux installations. D2 on Windows machines is fine.

If you are updating your D2 in Linux from r20232-b to the latest, you will very likely encounter the following problem:

$ mono Update.exe
Using download link http://metaverseink.com/download/diva-r22043.zip
Your current release is diva-r20232-b. Available release is diva-r22043
New release available. Updating…
Downloading new release from http://metaverseink.com/download/diva-r22043.zip to /tmp/diva-r22043.zip. This may take a few minutes.
……………………………………………………………:-)
Extracting new release to /home/opensim
* Unable to unzip. Please try updating later. (Reason: Path is empty)
*********************************************************************
Your installation has been updated. The new release is in
>> /home/opensim/diva-r22043 <<
Your regions have been migrated.
Please read the RELEASENOTES to know what changed.
If you made changes to OpenSim.ini, please copy that file over
or change the new one.
*********************************************************************

<Press return to exit>

In other words, the Update tool fails to unzip the new package.

This is due to a bug in a library included in OpenSim 0.7.4, on which diva-r20232-b is based. The offending library is called Ionic.Zip.dll. Here is what you need to do in order to get past this issue.

1 – Download this version of that library and place it in your current d2 bin folder, diva-r20232-b/bin. You can overwrite  the one that’s there, or move it somewhere before placing the new version there. Note that some download tools (e.g. wget) don’t overwrite files and instead give them new names. Make sure the new version has the right name.

2 – Run the Update tool again.
$ mono Update.exe

Voila! Problem solved.

The latest D2 release has the correct version of Ionic.Zip.dll, so hopefully this won’t happen next time you need to update.

$ less /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 nile.ics.uci.edu nile

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time harassing just about everyone in my University’s Networking Support department because I couldn’t get an OpenSim server to serve clients anywhere. We know that OpenSim networking is hard. But, damn it, I’m one of the core devs of OpenSim, and I have a pretty good idea of what’s involved in the protocols between the server and the client. I’ve had lots of OpenSim servers running successfully in all sorts of networks, including my University’s. Well, the problem turned out to be… Ubuntu!

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It’s been a while since I last posted about HG 2, but it’s finally coming to life! HG 2 is all about letting grid operators define policies for access control to their grid’s assets and users. I thought I’d show how it is taking shape, so that you’ll be ready for it in the next OpenSim release.

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Last week I packaged a release of the Diva Distribution (D2) for OpenSimulator 0.7.4. I’m glad to see that D2 continues to be very popular. Not just there’s already a large number of downloads, but other distributions such as sim-on-a stick also continue build on it. D2 is very easy to install because of the Configuration tool that comes with it. It’s also very easy to keep up-to-date because of the Update tool that is included.

Nevertheless, medium-to-advanced users of D2 often want to change a thing or two from what comes in the package. One thing that I often hear is people not wanting to use mega-regions and, instead, wanting to use plain regions. Another thing I often hear is wanting to add more regions. These are all perfectly good things to do with your D2 installation. However, there’s the wrong way and the right way of changing the default configurations. If you change them the wrong way, things may work fine for a while, but they may break in the next update. This post explains the right way of changing the D2 configurations.

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Like many of you, I read Maria’s article last December saying that Vivox was giving free voice service to small OpenSim worlds. I thought that was a nice gesture, but I confess I found it hard to believe, so I didn’t act on it. Until yesterday.

I decided to give it shot, because my projects could really use inworld voice, and I had nothing to loose just for asking. Yesterday was Sunday. To my surprise, I got a reply within 1 hour of my request. I filled out the license agreement. This morning an email was waiting for me with the precise instructions, down to the lines that I needed to add to my .ini, and a link to the blog post that Kitely wrote on how to enable voice. I just had to copy-and-paste the config, and I had voice working in 10 minutes! — 9 of which were spent figuring out which buttons to press on the viewer to enable voice all over.

I couldn’t believe it! Someone at Vivox must really like OpenSim! Wow.

D2-ers, don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity! See Maria’s article and take it from there. No need for complicated and costly licenses. No need for horribly complicated and fail-ful Freeswitch installations. Small worlds just got as powerful as the big ones — or even more powerful, because big, commercial worlds need to pay for the service, and the small ones don’t. At least for the time being.

I usually don’t write about the future, I prefer to write about things that are already done and working. But I’m going to make an exception, because people are starting to ask about configurations of the Hypergrid that pertain to the next level; we’re almost there, but not yet. I am going to give an overview of what’s in the works right now that will result in the next big bump in the HG number: the big two-point-oh.

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Hi everyone! I’m happy to announce the personal Hypergrid Teleporter! Its goal is to make your Hypergrid travels a bit easier and more enjoyable. Get it here as iar.

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Hi everyone! I finally had the time to put together a new diva distro release corresponding to OpenSim 0.7.2 — plus a few minor bug fixes over that. If you already have a d2 world, you know the drill: run Update.exe. Otherwise, grab the zip, unzip it and take it from the README file. If you’re upgrading, I highly recommend running the Configure tool on the new installation, and you’ll see why.

There are many improvements in OpenSim, most notably the new LSL NPC stuff — this allows you to create and manipulate Non-Player Characters (bots) directly from scripts. Really cool!

Hypergrid-wise, the most noteworthy development is the support for Friends across the Hypergrid. As explained in a previous post, I have created a world-to-world social network platform in OpenSim! Diaspora, anyone? Well, I get to actually do it and deploy it in  your worlds

Have fun!

P.S. I also made a new release for Wifi that works with Robust 0.7.2. Enjoy!

As the title says.

Over the weekend, I added the machinery for the new V2 map to work with vanilla OpenSim. If you want to try it out, watch out for the several changes in configuration files, especially those in .ini.example’s — make a diff to see what changed.

Note that viewer 2 is even more radical than viewer 1 when it comes to regions placed above 2,048. Most likely, the map won’t work there at all. (I haven’t tried it)

Also note that, for the time being, V2 map will get considerably confused on HG teleports. The first step was to make the map work. The next step is fixing the map for the Hypergrid. There’s a brute-force way of doing it, and there’s an elegant way of doing it. The elegant way of doing it requires collaboration with viewer developers. Let’s see what we can do together…

Enjoy!