Diva Distro for 0.7: Introducing Wifi

It took a long time, but OpenSim 0.7 is finally here! It’s quite difficult to explain the value of refactorings and of  re-conceptualizations of the software, which is what happened to OpenSimulator between 0.6.x and 0.7. Those things tend to be intangible at first (“WTF? This does the same thing! And it has bugs that it didn’t have before!”, etc.); the ROI only shows up later.

As an example of the new interesting things that can now be done, this new release features an embedded Web application for handling user registrations. It’s called Wifi. The features of Wifi are quite simple:

  • Account creation, optionally controlled by the administrator
  • Configurable default avatars for new accounts
  • Account updates by both users and administrator
  • Account deletion by administrator
  • Password recovery via email
  • Simple user inventory management

These features are enough for the worlds I run; they’ll be enough for many people, I think. This is just the first release, I expect Wifi to improve as we go a long — especially if more people want to help… I welcome help on this!

See it in action in one of my test worlds. Feel free to create a dummy account, login to it, recover your password, etc. And login to the world afterward. You can also use it for testing your own installation of the diva distro by hypergriding to it. (Note: this world is just for demonstration of Wifi and of the latest diva distro release; it will be shut down in a couple of weeks)

Wifi has a few interesting properties that make it a good fit for small-to-medium OpenSimulator-based virtual worlds. First of all, it doesn’t require the installation of Apache or other Web servers; it’s all done within the OpenSimulator code base. If you’re like me, you will think of this as a major win. Not having to install an additional major component like Apache and PHP/Python/what-have-you means less administrative hassle, less load on the machine, and just plain joy. Web app! No Apache! Just OpenSimulator! Yey!

Second, using the OpenSimulator code base brings many technical benefits. This isn’t an immediate benefit, but it is a benefit in the long run. Unlike the Apache-based Web apps that interface with the DB directly, Wifi interfaces with the OpenSimulator services layer using the core code, and therefore it is isolated from future changes to the OpenSimulator DB schema. In short, and of interest to diva distro users, Wifi will probably never be in the situation that other apps of the same kind are, always on the verge of being discontinued due to the hassle of making it catch up with the OpenSim schema. In the long run, this is a very good thing.

Third, technically, Wifi is a set of components that can be loaded up by both standalone simulators and Robust servers. What this means is that the exact same thing can serve diva distro worlds as well as larger grids in one seamless environment, OpenSimulator. I haven’t packaged it up for grids, but I might consider doing it at some point. So if your world grows to a medium grid, Wifi can handle it with no hassle.

Enjoy!

And, of course, also enjoy the extra security in HG 1.5, but that is invisible.

Here are the relevant links:

If you already have a diva distro up & running, simply run Update.exe on it and follow the instructions. This time, it’s really important that you read the release notes.

One last important note: the sequence of upgrades has a ‘pivot’ release at r12751. In other words, r12751 is a mandatory stop from all older releases. From r12751 on, upgrade gets you the latest. This new release today is r13458.

77 replies on “Diva Distro for 0.7: Introducing Wifi”

  1. Ai Austin says:

    Diva, is there a wiki or web page to explain the use of OpenSim WiFi?

    From your blog post here I am not sure if it will work in Grid setups versus standalone?

    Also thinking that the other basic things we seem to need a web server
    for like offline IM and Groups could usefully be directions to include someday.

  2. Diva Canto says:

    Yes, it works for grid setups, I have it running on one of my grids. I just don’t have time to write a users manual for it.

    My next steps with OpenSim are to make all the social stuff (IM, friends, groups, etc) work across the Hypergrid. Since I hate regular Web programming, I’m planning to develop implementations of all those services in C#, integrated with OpenSim. Unclear if they will be part of the core distribution or not.

  3. Ai Austin says:

    Thanks Diva. And I saw the WiFi setup page at http://wiki.github.com/diva/d2/wifi

  4. Diva Canto says:

    Yeah, that doesn’t quite explain how to make it work within Robust, but it’s not that hard to figure it out.

  5. Karen Palen says:

    Thank you Diva – a very nice job as usual!

    You might mention that to log in to your Tagus world with a viewer you need –loginuri http://tagus.ics.uci.edu:9000/

    There also doesn’t seem to be any login page which is a little disconcerting!

    Imprudence worked first try and gave me one of the fastest and cleanest logins I have ever seen – even on my own LAN!

    I do like your library avatars too – ANYTHING to get away from “Ruth in Red pants!” LOL

    All three could use a pair of shoes though :-)

  6. Diva Canto says:

    Thanks @Karen! I swear one of these days I’ll read up on the login page… never quite had the time to find out how that works.

  7. Very cool! And I’m very much looking forward to hypergrid-enabled friends and IMs!

    Now if only the folks on the viewer site would hurry up and add hypergrid landmarks… :-)

    — Maria

  8. Ai Austin says:

    Diva, just a note on the login page… there was the old mechanism up to 0.6.9 where you could give a “http_loginform.html” page and it would be served if you used the loginURI as a “-loginpage” parameter for the viewer. I know that the particupar exmaple given in “http_loginform.html.example” which tried to provide a form for login did not (and has not for many moons) work.. but it was a simple convenient way to give a web page that was easily customised to act as the browseer contents page when you login with a viewer.

    On our setup up to 0.6.9 we just had a nice background image, and some overlaid text/images and giving some useful info. See http://vue.ed.ac.uk/openvue-grid.html From 0.7 we had to serve this from a normal Apache web server.

    Maybe the “http_loginform.html” could be made to work in 0.7 along with a simple background image and text just generically for Opensim which any sim provider could taolor to their needs… and perhaps named more appropriately to “http_loginpage.html”?

  9. Arielle Popstar says:

    Executing the update tool in diva-r12274 automatically downloaded and installed diva-r13458. As I have lost the ability to log in or HG to the megaregion from another .7 region, I assume I broke something through the bypassing of r12751. Is there a way to manually specify the ‘pivot’ release?

  10. Diva Canto says:

    @Arielle: that shouldn’t be a problem. The major thing in 12751 was to change the Update tool itself, so that it displays the contents of the IMPORTANT file after it’s done. So maybe you missed the IMPORTANT note included in r13458 :-) Read it and follow the instructions.

  11. Arielle Popstar says:

    The part I missed was were this Update Tool assumed that my database string contains User ID=Opensim rather than the User Id=root which was the default setup through Xampp back when i installed diva-11651. This was the first update where this was an issue for me. I only mention it in case any others have a problem as the termination error points at the password being the problem rather than the db User ID.

    Would the non-standard User ID be responsible for (Wifi not loading 2010-08-03 09:14:25,109 INFO – Diva.Wifi.WifiModule [Wifi Module]: Could not load configuration. Wifi will be disabled.) in spite of the admin Username/password being filled in?

  12. […] and useful add-ons to the regular "core" distro! :exclamation: Read about it here: Diva Distro for 0.7: Introducing Wifi A test world to try it out: Temporary Test world (dies in a couple of weeks) Grab a copy from: […]

  13. Diva Canto says:

    @Ai: the next release of d2 will have the -loginpage back via Wifi. This is not in OpenSim core, it’s in Wifi. I have mixed feelings about where this belongs. I think it belongs in Wifi and similar, not in core. The core code is not supposed to serve html.

    For a preview, get the Hippo and hit GridInfo on http://ucigrid00.nacs.uci.edu:8002

  14. Breen Whitman says:

    “It’s quite difficult to explain the value of refactorings and of re-conceptualizations of the software”.

    Always, there will be strategists in one corner, and front line operational pundits in the other. Despite being supposedly in the same camp, they can be at odds with each other.

    Fortunately, you can get in the middle, a few that combine both skills. They can be the glue that holds it all together.

    Thanks to Diva , plus others to be the middle glue, to help hold it all together.

  15. Ai Austin says:

    Diva, I have a Robust HG grid version of Wifi going fine taking the parts of the Diva distribution needed. Check if I have the right instructions if you get chance… They are noted at
    http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Wifi#Binary_Approach

    I spotted a couple of things you might want to note:

    Logged on as admin user avatar, its edit account and inventory access links do not show.

    Not important… but create avatar create buttton and some other buttons do not sees to have a different style URL to others not having WebAddress included on front when hovering mouse over it. Others show WebAddress.

  16. Diva Canto says:

    @Ai: Cool! you figured it out! 😀
    If you’re running in a robust server, Diva.Modules.dll is not needed. The others are.
    and yes, the admin area doesn’t allow you to edit the admin account.

    WRT license, if you plan to re-distribute you need to add the license. If it’s just for your own use, it’s good practice to have it, but no one will even notice.

  17. Ai Austin says:

    Ah, I made Wifi admin my main avatar as I thought the also had inworld region god status as my main avatar alreday owns the regions. I wonder if I can now backout of that now its been run? Will it create a new avatar if one does not exist if its run in a new setup? Good to have that noted in the build instructions.

    I am not plannig to reditribute at all Diva. Just helping get things in a form that can be packaged for others (and me for later versions). Adding the licence maybe into a doc/WIFI.txt might be enough? Or a top level WIFI-LICENCE.txt? Something named so it can be added in and make sense in an OpenSim setup.

    Looking forward to including the welcome page and I will change the instructions on the OpenSim Wiki to adjust for the structure you use then. Do you plan addon-module/Wifi as the location?

  18. Ai Austin says:

    I madec another avatar the admin one for Wifi and that woerked fine.. I was able to log on and it now shows MANAGE USERS.

    But the oprevious one I used when I log on with that avatar name ALSO shows MANAGE USERS. I.e.. that role is sticky. I assume the behaviour would be better if it only had oen admin user.

    Short term is there a field or data base entry somewhere that I can manually alter to turn the first avatar I used wrongly as the wifi admin avatar into a “normal” user?

    I see something about level and flags and the previous admin is Leevel 100. is that the admin indicator. If I edit it to 0 will it become a normal user Diva?

  19. Diva Canto says:

    yeah, you can change the admin account; simply change the name on the .ini. If the account doesn’t exist it will be created, and Wifi will ask you for a password when it runs again.

    The license can be seen, for example, here:
    http://github.com/diva/diva-distribution/blob/master/addon-modules/Wifi/WifiServerConnector.cs
    So add a text file with that license on it.

    I’m planning to make a .zip distribution of Wifi alone, and it will have a license on it.

    And yes, 100 is the marker. If you put it back to 0, it will be back to normal.

  20. Ai Austin says:

    I added the licence text to a file as well as to your doc/WIFI.txt in my setup. though as I said I don’t plan to distribute it. I plan to stay in step with how you distribute and add that in as I buikld my system Diva thanks.

    I think Wifi is a very valuable contribution and has lots opf potential to get others to add in useful things in a simple way. I can imaging region owner change properties faclities, world map, links to backup/save content (like Second/Stored Inventory), access to offline IM delivery, sending an IM without using a 3D client, etc.

    One point.. you may not like this!… but its better to thin of t earlier than change after is a more widely used module. Is the name Wifi something you feel stronhly about. It is suggestive of the other kind of Wifi and could be confusing. Would a simple WI be better? (also links MI and WI).

    Noting a few things as I try it.

    1. In search for users I get matching users plus an extra blank line on end. It has blank name, e-mail and level. But eduit and delete links are there and give a web page if you click them with ?side parameter but no UUID. Is the index out by one?

    2. It might be good to establish a “norm” for the port that the Wifi HTTP service runs on. In your examples I think you use 9000 for standalones and 8002 for grids – i.e. the usual OpenSim login ports. I have done the same. But he Wifi.ini.example sugggests a standard or alternative HTTP port like 80 ad 8080. Would it be better to use 9000/8002 as te “norm” and in exmaples. But explain that any can be chosen. See http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Wifi#Problems_with_HTTP_ports

  21. Ai Austin says:

    Just suggestions here on things I found useful. You may feel they are useful to consider in improving the geenral useful ness of the nicely designed sample web pages Diva.

    On the style.css, I found the “links” area when you nhiver over a link ot turn black, same as background as style sheet has hover colour as black.

    I made it same as the main-menu li hover colour and that works better.

    #posts li a:hover {
    color:#8C8D94;

    You may not need this with a couple of links, but m,ost folks m,ighht addd their own link and contact inmfor there. I added two lines. Given this the distance between lines “posts” li spacing is also a bit big. I reduced it to 20px.

    For the web site pages design copyright line.. it mentions “web site” (c). Tt may be better to refer to the “web design” to differentiate it from the grid and site specific content? I suggest something like

    Web design © Copyright Crista Lopes 2010. Distributed under Creative Commons.

    Is there a way to enable the admin/region functionality. Or is that for a future release?

  22. Ai Austin says:

    One last thing for this evening. The incorporation of an image on index.html entry page within the contents div and nicely sized using width=100% to match the contents box could be a stabndrad thing? Perhaps using the same image you plan to use on welcome.html?

    See my version of the changes I have suggested at: http://virtual.aiai.ed.ac.uk:8002/wifi

  23. Diva Canto says:

    Ai: love the image on the splash, but it doesn’t quite work in that place of the index, because of how the other pages are generated. There’s a place for it. It’s in style.css – body – background.

    I took it out of there, because it was getting on my nerves being shown on every page. So maybe what I need to do is to send an image on the very first splash page. That needs a couple of lines of code.

    I welcome all these suggestions, as graphic design is not my thing. I’m surprised it came out as nice as it did, considering how clueless I am on the graphic design department.

  24. Ai Austin says:

    I like the nice clean design personally. Great you took the suggestions as they were intended. Some folks get very terratorial about such comments and get pretty miffed. I agree the image is meant to be only on index.html… and that at the moment its appearing at the bottom of every contents-box. You know the code so I will not try to further mix that up. If you add an image to index.html only, it could usefully be defaulted to your orange three planet image that you have for your welcome.html in your development version? The style might generalise to include a “site-color” (default your orange).. so that is very easily changed too?

    Where you have “Diva wifi” – I wonder if you might feel “Opensim ” would be okay as the default… leaving credits to you in copyrihht niotice at the bottom (renamed to Wed desgn (c) Diva… “. I am really thinking then folks don’t have to change anything except teh site colour and spalsh image to make a really nice starter web front end.

    Ahead of the grid name I found the .: in the title looked nice in your orange colour rather than white. It also continues the 3 dotes orange theme then on every page. See my experiments and example at: http://virtual.aiai.ed.ac.uk:8002/wifi

  25. Ai Austin says:

    Maybe just a tadge too much black space at the top and bottom too?

    I tried

    header: height 66 -> 15 and padding top 95 -> 45

    footer-padding: height 60 -> 10

  26. Ai Austin says:

    Sorry one more I spotted I changed in experiments… to help move things up so a few added site specific links work well

    right-nav-divider padding-bottom 33px -> 15px

  27. Ai Austin says:

    I note that search for users in the manage users page does not woprk if you use two character search strings. 3 characters works fine.

    So “Ai” does not find Ai Austin and Ai AIAI.

    “Te” does not find my five Testx User named where x = a to e.

    “Tes” does

    I tried adding in the Manage Regions entry for the admin menu… just to see if it works, but I just get rerturned to the entry login page. Is that potential future functionality or is there a way to enable it?

  28. Ai Austin says:

    On testing the forgot password feacility, I note it asks for your e-mail address. That need not be unique in an Opensim usereaccounts setup. I have 5 test users (and all my default avatars) on the same e-mail address for exmaple. So when I ask for a opassword reset it chooses one and send the password change e-mail for that one. Its maybe no big problem as it would let someone normally get in fine.

    But the avatar name is the only unique thing I think? And so I wonder if the passsword reset ought to ask for your avatar first and last name instead of your e-mail?

  29. Ai Austin says:

    There is a lot of possibility, but where to stop and give a mechanism by which other can add.

    One obvious thing a lot of folks will want is a grid map. We do that via ?method=regionimageUUID served pages. See bottom of http://vue.ed.ac.uk/openvue/

    E.g one of our regions would be
    http://virtual.aiai.ed.ac.uk:9000/index.php?method=regionImage9c8b6f8f81784a6992dc9feba4646e6b

    So the parts are composable via database requests. We serve offline (where an expected region is not serving) and void tiles to file the non-populated area.

  30. Ai Austin says:

    Moving my final coments on Wifi hooks in core distribution here as asked for by opensim-dev mailing list admins…

    From: Cristina Videira Lopes
    >> The more I think about this, the stronger I feel about Wifi not being
    >> included in core. It really doesn’t belong there.

    I realise I implied in my comments on opensim-dev that I thought that addons in their entirity should all be packaged in the released distribution and git/zip/tars, etc. I did not meant to imply that.

    What I really meant was that suitable module adaptors and connectors (if needed) and sections in the config files would be in place but the module disabled… but that the actual systems sources or binary be separate and obtained and installed on need. That’s why I had in mind Freeswitch, offline IM, groups, etc. There the core/gti/zip/tar includes enough to let you enable and configure what is wanted. But the system itself would be separate.

    So for Wifi it might be that the required .ini file section are in and available without risk of error when the module is added.

    But so long as the process and instructions are clear for a source or binary install it shold not bmatter… heck it took us 6 months gtio get FreeSwitch woeking, but Wifi effectively worked first time barring a port assignment mistake.

  31. Diva Canto says:

    @Ai: thanks for the graphic design suggestions. I am incorporating them all into the next release of Wifi.
    All, except the very top header’s words. I don’t want to use the word “OpenSim” and I don’t think people should use it either. It’s part of the BSD license that people should not use the name of the project to endorse other projects without written consent. While most uses by most people are ok, some people abuse. Like open-simulator.com and opensim.net, for example, which are on the extreme of abuse and may cause a serious confusion for newcomers. So, to be very clear about respecting that 3rd clause of the license, OpenSim is not used anywhere in Wifi, other than on the link to it.

    I’m changing it to something generic.

  32. Ai Austin says:

    Gor it and understand Diva. I will use whatever you go with on next release.

    I spotted an issue with a triviao mistake I made. I accidentally left WebAddress at an old value on port 8002 that I had changed earlier so it turned out that SOME but not all of the action/underlyignpages served as hostname:8003 and some as the intended hostname:8002 as intended – I have 8002 as the port in the sdervice connecvtors.

    I looked ta the web pages in WifiPages and see that some start with

    form action=”/wifi/login”

    but not all. Sopme have the WebAddress missing such as main-menu.html

    They all ought to have the web adddress at the front I assume? Or maybe they all should NOT?

  33. Ai Austin says:

    I meant I had left WebAddress as virtual.aiai.ed.ac.uk:8003 (wrongly) yet my service conmnector was virtual.aiai.ed.ac.uk:8002. Some sub pages worked as they used /wfii/page.html others did not as they picked up the (wrong) web address. I would not havwe spotted the proble if my WebAddress had been right. The handling just needs to be consistent across all pages and content addin sub-pages I think.

  34. Ai Austin says:

    I wonder if you will get chance to include the ability to pull in a nominated image something like site-image.jpg in as the contents under the usual content-box header dark grey on just the index.html page as we discussed Diva? It would be useful I think. If it was sized as 685 wide it would match pixel for pixel with the dark box header image.

    I think the 3 orange planets image you have for the new welcome.html page could e a gresta default for this. Though again that might usefully be renamed so people can just reoplace the image and not amend the HTML code at all. te orange planets is currently 650 wide. It it was made 685 wide it would not be rescaled when shown.

    I see you possibly incoudign a fabviocon.ico as well in te sources you are working on. The single orange blob is a good idea. One little suggestion… if you made it 3 smaller orange blobs in the same shape as the orange planets image it might look more distinctive and smart?

  35. Ai Austin says:

    In testing the Wifi web pages I note a couple of things…

    a) if you try to register an avatar name that already exists.. there is no message to say that. It just back to home page. It would be good if the “Avatar name already exists” message came out whee you give opther mesages such as when an account awaits admin approval.

    b) For retrieve password… if e-mail is the retrieval anchor… it would be good to list the avatars that have the e-mail address coupled and they could be given in a radio buttton style with first or only one elected. That could be enough to help the user get back in. Or the user could then ask for the password reset for the one selected. This would work for a single avatar too of coiurse.

  36. Michael Joyce says:

    Diva

    Thank you for all the hard work.

    I have been running my previous Diva Distribution Standalones on a USB flash drive, as it gave me portability. I use USBWebserver software for my MySql. In all previous updates Diva Distribution worked without a hitch.

    This time I did the Update and went to the Configure.exe and answered the questions. Then I saw a post from Arielle Popstar which told of her having to change the database string from “opensim” to “root”. I did this and ran the 32 bit Launcher. It ran, but there were a lot of red lines (more than I have ever seen). When done, I started a viewer and noticed some of the region buildings rezed in. But none of my inventory appeared.

    I noticed in the Myworld.ini.old, the previous lines about Standalone were not in the new ini. I did a recheck by running r12751. Everything appeared under the old version.

    I know I must be missing something. Maybe I need to wait……

    Many thanks

    Mike
    I did the update and answered the questions.

  37. Diva Canto says:

    Just wrote the release notes for the next release of wifi:

    – added welcome page at /wifi/welcome.html
    – separated splash.html from index.html for easier customization
    – separated more pieces apart for easier customization
    – added favicon
    – added auto session expiration after 30 min of inactivity
    – assorted graphic design touchups (thanks Ai Austin!)

    I broke things into small, safe pieces; I’m going to be very clear about what people can and can’t customize. The safe pieces will be preserved on updates (d2 only, the update tool).

    Improvements will happen over time. I’m too busy right now to improve the current features (such as listing accounts with same email address, etc)

  38. Diva Canto says:

    @Mike: unless you changed your database, you should not need to change your database connection string at all. Put it back as it was.

  39. Michael Joyce says:

    Diva,
    I did as you directed and put everything back as it was. I even deleted the r13458 version I had which did not have my inventory. I did a new Update of r12751 and then used the Configure.exe. When I ran the 32Bit Launcher the command screen ran a few lines and shut down at the line:

    2010-08-08 21:42:28,769 INFO – OpenSim.Data.MySQL.MySQLEstateStore [REGION DB]: MySql – connecting: Data Source=localhost;Database=opensim;User ID=opensim;Password=***;

    Mike

  40. Ai Austin says:

    In the spirit of small comsmetic changes only at this stage Diva.. as I am quite sure you have had enough inpits already…

    I found it useful to have the loginuri to use prominent on teh Wifi pafge.. so added it right under your site/web design line in the footer. It can be done by puling in the var=LoginURL usefully.

    -loginuri <!– #get var=LoginURL –>

    Woud it be worth changing that var name to LoginURI to be compatible with its usual menaning as a viewer parameter before the old var names gets into too widespread usage?

    I suggest a minor change to the e-mail sent to users on account activation.. that you include the loginuri from the var value in that e-mail too.

    Did I suggest before that for the admin user of Wifi, it would be useful if they were able to managee their own account details. Adding into the right hand menu the usual edit account and inventory lines like the standard user.

  41. Ai Austin says:

    The Wifi module seems to have no enabled = false/true

    Is it handy to have that so it can be turned on and off even when configured… And that would make it like other modules like FreeSwitch I assume?

  42. Diva Canto says:

    @Ai: if you’re running Wifi in Robust, you don’t have the wifi region module at all.

  43. Diva Canto says:

    @Mike: That looks like you either have done some changes in the configurations or some changes in your DB. I’m not familiar with USBWebserver software for my MySql. You can try filing an issue report here:
    http://github.com/diva/diva-distribution/issues
    Start by reporting the exact error message and if/when I have time, I’ll give you some tips.

  44. Ai Austin says:

    Thanks Diva… my [WifiService] parameters section is in Robust.HG.ini fine. So, if it goes into OpenSim.ini for a standalonwe, will theer be an eabled = rye/false line added? I ask as it would be useful to note it on the standalone config info on the Wiki if so to help others.

    http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Wifi#Setting_Configuration_Parameters

  45. Diva —

    One more question: Does the latest update include Justin’s media-on-a-prim features? I recently tested SL Viewer 2 out on Grid4Us, which uses it, and the media-on-a-prim seems to work perfectly (as well as HG teleports and OMC payments — yeay!).

    Not everyone likes SL Viewer 2, of course, but the media-on-a-prim functionality can be very useful for educators and enterprises.

    — Maria

  46. Diva Canto says:

    @Maria: no. This is all still 0.7.0.x series. Media-on-a-Prim is on the upcoming 0.7.1 — maybe in 6 weeks or so.

    @Ai: Wifi for standalones is in the diva distro. No need to explain or fiddle with configs; they are there, and they are correct.

  47. Ai Austin says:

    Looking great, and its fantastic to see so many folks contributing elements. I think this is a heathly sign for where this part of OpenSim could go.

    As usual, pelase treat these minor twweaks as “helpful” suggestions.. some folks do not like these… my wife things I am “far too helpful” :-)

    New footer, coloured URI looks nice. I suggest there is less space between the separator bar and first line, and that you drop the extra non-breaking space line. Maybe I just like toghether vstyles than you do though. Easy to change. but it would be nice if the core style and layout could be used and just custom elements altered.

    I added ability to edit account and see inventory to my admin user menu, as I did not want to have to do that in otherways.

    I had some odd effects when I ended up with two admin (Level=100) accounts due to changing to a second admin user. They went away when I reduced first avatar I used to level = 0

    I seem to be losing the e-mails sent saying there is an accouint pensing with authorisation set to true. They are turining up in my gmail account but niot ghettignforarded to my work accoutn as usual. Other test messages to that accont do forwrds. Still investigating as gmail.com is even on the whitelist for my work account for now to see what the issue is. Not sure yet.

    Any other wifi users having aproblem in tjhis resopect to try to pin it down? Just could be my e-mail forwarding setup is odd.

    Any thoughts when you might release v2 Diva?

  48. Ai Austin says:

    Note on separation of splash.html from index.html…. does this mean that the site image will appear on the entry URL of http://hostname:8002/wifi or :9000/wifi which is I think what is wanted. We don’t really want to point people at a separate splash.html URL for entry do we?

  49. Ai Austin says:

    Just a note, I tested a sort of lashup of your new WifiPages… they may not be wquiote contigured correctly, but the favicon.ico, which looks fine when I saved a copy from youir soure build area to my desktop with the single orange blob, seems to look a bit garbled in the icon position in IE8, safari, Chrome ansd Firefox when I just tested. Is it okay for you Diva? I know favicons can be awkward with caching, so it may clear itself up in my setup.

    Try http://virtual.aiai.ed.ac.uk:8002/wifi and see if your favicon shows for you?

  50. Diva Canto says:

    @Ai: the favicon will not show up correctly if you’re running the old code. The splash.html is the default splash page, no need to say splash.html explicitly.

  51. Per Eriksson says:

    Utdated to 0.7.0.1 no drama in doing that. The new login page looks great clean and crisp :-) the added colour rounds the edges of a bit very nice. The login URI also handy to have after downloading the client.
    I do have one small problem when I try to use “manage users” it brings me back to the the page I just come from? Could easily be my screw up but have tried it a few times so do not really know where I have gone wrong? Everything else so far looks great thank you .

  52. Ai Austin says:

    Great, thanks Diva. Looking forward to the new release. Hope the inputs were useful.

  53. Ai Austin says:

    Is the 9-Aug version of the Wifi zip ready to use Diva? I ask because when I installed it and logging on as the Admin user the mangage users” liink now gives a blank contents area… the search for users thing is gone.

    I also tried creating a user, and then the search box and activate/delete user box does appear. After teh user is dealt with, then manage users again fails to show the search page. Maybe its just a bit of the HTML code that is wonky?

    I fixed this for acccess just now by leaving an unhandled dummy user in the list :-)

  54. Ai Austin says:

    Updated and simplified the Wiki page now to fit with zip release availability.

    http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Wifi

    Is the user “Title” something that will be useful anywhere? Can it be altered to any useful string specific to a grid inteersts, or should it be left alone? I note that it defaults to “Local User” for Wifi created avatars, and is null for ones created earlier (or via Opensim consoles I guess?).

  55. Diva Canto says:

    @Per and @Ai there was a bug that crept in on the version of Wifi I put out yesterday. It has been corrected. The new zip packages have it fixed.

  56. Per Eriksson says:

    Thank you Diva updated to 13558 and all is working fine :-)

  57. Ai Austin says:

    All well in Wifi land with the latest fix. Thanks Diva.

  58. Ai Austin says:

    Diva. if or when you do another update… one thng I believe I mentioned before that I think would help uysers is to ad a line into the activation e-mail tyhey are sent if authorisation is on.

    Your account has been activated. First name: *** Last name: *** Password: ***

    Viewer loginuri

  59. Ai Austin says:

    Can’t resist suggesting somethig else. To improve the new user esxperience it would be good if Home Position could be set… that is the griduser table entries HomeRegionID, HomePosition and HoemLookAt (that could just be set to ).

    A new parameter in te Wifi section HomeLocation with format regionname/x/y/z might do it with region name looked up to give the RegionID. If it was null (by default in the [Wifi] section) it just would not be set and be same as now.

    The same value could also be used to fill in the LastRegionID, LastPosition and LaskLookAt to help make the usual “last position setting in a new user start on a Viewer work wthout a warning too.i

    I might suggest it as a general facility for OpenSim create User too in Mantis. Bt Wifi woud be a nice place for it to appear?

  60. […] upgraded Condensation Land to use release 13558 of the Diva distribution (D2). R13558 is based on Opensim 0.7.0.1 post fixes, and it incorporates […]

  61. Marcus L. says:

    Hello fellow Diva Distro user,

    how about a prominent link on Divas site,
    to simulations which use Diva’s distribution?

    Can we get that, Diva ? :~)

  62. @Ai: “For retrieve password… if e-mail is the retrieval anchor… it would be good to list the avatars that have the e-mail address coupled and they could be given in a radio buttton style with first or only one elected. That could be enough to help the user get back in. Or the user could then ask for the password reset for the one selected. This would work for a single avatar too of coiurse.”

    I think this would pose a significant privacy problem: for example, my email is public; by using it, everybody could in fact get an answer to the question “how many alts does Zonja have that are using her public email?”.

    Maybe if a select where email = ’email’ returns more than one row a non-compromising message could be issued (“insufficient data, please provide more details”), and then the user would be forced to enter more data (i.e., first name and/or last name, whatever is needed to get one and only row in the result set).

  63. Ai Austin says:

    Diva, there are some web pages about region management in the Wifi distribution WifiPages directory. re these live or usable and what can they do?

    A way to see and change the region settings would be most useful, especially now Melanie has removed the old region_settings.XML default changing facility. Having these all available as defaults to Wifi and a way to manage might be good?

    One day a change to the confirmation of account setup e-mail to include the loginuri for the grid or standalone would I think help users.

  64. Diva Canto says:

    Ai: region management is still in the works, not quite working.

    The next release of Wifi will have many small improvements like the one you mention.

  65. […] is a mini virtual world powered by Opensim. We are using r13558 of the Diva distribution (D2); the Wifi page can be accessed here. Condensation Land has a WordPress blog, used mainly to keep users […]

  66. Ai Austin says:

    Just doing soem more tstig on Wifi… as one user had password problems and when I did a password reset” in Manage Users he claimed the message of what to do and the new password to use did nnot come through to him.

    I just tested this with one of my own avatars, and did a reset on it. The Wifi web page said

    The account has been updated.

    But I see no e-mail after a few minutes anyway to indicate what it was change to or the process to follow to get a new one. Should a message have been sent Diva? I have checked the e-mail address works fine.

    I do find though that the previous password no longer works, so it must have got altered.

    I had to manually change the password in the Robust.exe console to make sure I can get back in.

  67. Diva Canto says:

    When you do password reset directly in the admin interface, there is no email sent. We don’t want admin actions leaking anywhere. Email is only sent when the user goes through the “Forgot password” process.

  68. Ai Austin says:

    What does it reset the password to Diva? Ah, I guess you are meant to type in a new one there and then hit reset :-) Got it!

    I have noted that the style.css sets the width of the web page (at 999) jus a LITTLE bit too wide to render without a scroll bar fir the initial sgtartup width for most viewers after their initial installation. Setting the width down from 999px to 980 seems to be enough to make it look good without the scrool bar appearing. Would this be a change you could consider in style.css for the next release Diva?

    style.css

    alter 999px to 980px for overall page width (3 times)
    alter 238px to 220px for right menu width (once)

    I also found that lifting the footer up just a little worked well, rather than it trailing over the end of the visible display area on typical laptop sized web browser pages I saw. So I altered footer-pad top padding from 50px to 20px.

    padding:20px 0px 0px 30px;

    I guess I just go for tighter closed up styles though.

  69. Ai Austin says:

    I spotted that the bottom grey contents box rounded corner image is not present i your design Diva, thiough its in the images folder unused. Did you do that deliberatly to save space, or did you mena to enable it in content-box.html?

  70. Erik N says:

    Diva, just want to say thank you so much for all your work! I’m really enjoying the new features.

  71. Zane Legion says:

    Thanks for the effort you’ve put into Wifi, Diva. Do you have any plans to incorporate email address verification during the signup process? (ie. Send the user an email and have them click on a link to verify they own the email address).

    In a grid environment this really helps with banning griefers, identifying alts, etc.

  72. Ai Austin says:

    Diva. I was adding a line of text into the right menu to temporarily say create accounts was unavailable while I on travel… and noticed that adding in simple body text goes in as black (since the color is not specified in the style) on a black background (which is defined in the style as #000). Can I suggest you add color:#FFF; into the style sheet for the default “body” text definition to help anyone changign things and make sure such added text shows up without them having to work out why it does not?

    body {
    font-size:100%;
    font-family: Arial,’Lucida Grande’,Verdana,sans-serif;
    text-align:center;
    background:#000 repeat-y top center;
    color:#FFF;
    }

  73. Rick says:

    As I understand it the distro if Hypergrid ready. Any recommend example or documentation about making Hypergrid connections with the Diva distro?

  74. Diva Canto says:

    @Rick: you don’t make hypergrid connections with the diva distro; you make connections with other hypergrid-enabled virtual worlds out there. Try http://www.hyperica.com/ or my own Mi Search http://webi.metaverseink.com/opensim/results.jsp?query=type%3Asim&vw=os to find other worlds.

  75. Problem says:

    Works, but it doesn’t set a users home region or allow one to set a home region for registration. This is a problem as every time you login, you get the pop up stating that you have no home region need to set one.

    Other than that… this has good potential to be very useful to many.

  76. Problem says:

    Diva wrote:

    “When you do password reset directly in the admin interface, there is no email sent. We don’t want admin actions leaking anywhere. Email is only sent when the user goes through the “Forgot password” process.”

    I agree. However, the page does need to say account created or something. Just to let the user know they can login. Maybe a redirect on success or failure to a designated page. Biggest issue is the user home region setting.

  77. Problem says:

    One other issue, the “auth and griduser” tables remain populated. They are not cleared when removing a user from wifi admin. I usually run a search when deleting a user to verify all the baggage isn’t hanging around. It does remove the inventory folders. That is a huge plus.

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