one thing i have learned from being in OpenSim for 8 months now – patience
i reboot the server and restart the sims many times per week and clear my cache, but OpenSim is still alpha software and that’s what alpha means – not stable
while OpenSim is a great alternative to Second Life, it is not there yet and if you are patient, then it can be a rewarding experience. but don’t expect Second Life stability – not yet anyway
waiting for our server to come back online - the zen of ener (zener)
see this diner below? i have been working on it for a few days and yesterday the roof over the car parking was blue. it was still blue this afternoon when i came home for lunch and it was blue until 30 minutes ago
why isn’t it blue anymore? (ener gets blue sometimes though . . .)
i have no idea. i restarted the sims (several times), rebooted the server (a couple of times), cleared my cache, and even used two different viewers
so what’s the dealio?
i chalk it up to OpenSim being alpha. it does not seem that there is an answer for this, it’s just something i have come to accept. it’s no big deal, but it does take lots of patience
there was an entire ring of booths - someone must have needed them more than me =)
Despite your woes, you have built a tremendous amount of content in the time you have been in Reaction Grid.
I know it takes a lot of rebooting but also keep in mind that Linden Lab did this with their rolling restarts and had a larger staff. Even though Second Life may be 1000s of times larger than Reaction Grid, there is a big difference with 50 people overseeing that server network versus the two or three elsewhere.
Here we act, partly, as our own tech staff and that is one reason this costs a fraction of what Second Life does.
I agree that the stability is nowhere what it is in Second Life, not even close.
But there are also greater opportunities in OpenSim and far more freedom. Freedom in particular from strange policies that often thwart good people’s efforts.
By the way, the addition of those dumpsters to the diner is a clever way to discuss commercial waste and things such as biodiesel made from spent cooking oil!
Thanks! *adds yet another activity to the list – hmmm, can also tangent into anthropology!* :)
David Miller
26 Jul 10 at 11:17 pm
Re stability. I myself am in OSGrid, and the OSGrid way is they run the core services including the inventory, and residents run one or more region instances, and the database for that region on their own host machine, usually a spare machine at homes.
Originally I ran my region under a linux machine under Mono with MySQL on a moderate machine. Avg resource usage as 60% with 80% peaks. I found my region to be quite unstable with several reboots a week, and sometimes, several times a day.
Of course OS is built in .Net so in effect, a windows native environment. I clue to stability was tests people were running at the time. Typical was “50 users…for Windows. 30 for Linux(Mono)”.
While, of course, my experiment is hardly robust, I decided I would purchase a mid to upper range Quad Core AMD server with plenty of RAM, and installed Windows.
My main region is notable for a build of a 1500 prim linked building. And I run streaming. In the 4 months I have had this setup, I am guessing I have restarted the Sim perhaps 3 times, and maybe twice was to upgrade the OS version anyway.
Of course the resource graphs barely budge, but OpenSimulator likes it that way it seems.
Breen Whitman
27 Jul 10 at 4:30 am
so do you have your own server at home or ar you using some host? this sounds like a very good way to go (the constant rebooting is driving me nuts, last nite i must have spent an hour messing with this – it really hampers my building goals)
Ener Hax
27 Jul 10 at 7:15 am
[...] reading Ener’s post OpenSim – patience, patience, patience I thought I’d better check in on our star builder, cook, and bottle washer. I stay out of [...]
Checking Up on Ener at i live in science land
27 Jul 10 at 9:26 pm
I run my region from home 24×7. While the connection is healthy, it will mean a limit on visitors due to bandwidth and I am guessing its 5-6 avatars.
But when my region was crashing with just me or sometimes no-one, something had to be done. I run a mysql database at home too, as the build in sqllite is a bit temperamental.
Of course, if one was to run an event and exppect 20 people, then an external host and the bandwidth would be essential.
But a point I make is, no matter where the region is hosted, I suspect the Virtual Private Server package of “Celeron, 386mb ram, Ubuntu just does not cut it, yet load usage may be below these limits.
One big advanatge to OSGrid: whether you are also resident there, or Second Life, Or Reaction Grid, OSGrid should be your sand box (no 24 hour limit!). You then pack up your prims and take to your world. Of course, you should build to the recipient world restrictions. For Opensim worlds use a region OAR file, and for SL, use one of the viewers that allows importing.
I am guessing 95% of OSGrid servers are home ones.
Breen Whitman
27 Jul 10 at 9:36 pm
wow! i am in awe of you! i set up OpenSim a year ago or so, but what a disaster. i had no physics and had a rough time getting it going (far too techy for me)
we had considered setting it up again because all the stuff i am working on does not need to be external facing at all and would sure save money
but subQuark (the money half of this deal) likes to stay out there and be part of the community and support those doing a good job of it
your comment might be enough for me to dabble in installing it again, thanks! =)
Ener Hax
27 Jul 10 at 9:43 pm
Today, getting a standalone running is as easy as double clicking the opensim.exe (on a windows machine). ANd download a self install WAMP server for mysql lets you save your builds. Opensimulator will set it all up.
Where the main trip up is, is getting others to come in from the outside of your asdl modem. But you do not need this.
Not commonly known(still) is the modem needs to support “Loopback” if you want outside people to come in. In simple terms, the modem knows how to let traffic out and back into the region.
Without this, outside people cant join even with the necessary ports opened. A half dozen of so modems are known to have “Loopback support.”
Breen Whitman
28 Jul 10 at 2:07 am