Running OpenSim in Standalone Mode

How would you like a whole sim to play around with, all for yourself, and totally free?

Astonishing as it sounds, this is already possible. There are just a few major limitations. You must settle for using the OpenSim software package, which still lacks a great many functions, when compared to all that you can do in Second Life. You must also put on your “do-it-yourself” hat, and be prepared to hack your way through the tough spots. And to start with, you must settle for being all alone on your self-contained little sim, because connecting your sim to a grid on the Internet is a much more complicated affair.

Running OpenSim in standalone mode on your home computer turns out to be remarkably easy to implement. All you have to do is download a pre-compiled executable binary version of the OpenSim program, install it on your computer, start it up, and run through a few simple configuration command lines. Here is how I did it.

Downloading the executable binary files

Start with the User Docs page on the OpenSim website, which serves as the Table of Contents for the OpenSim documentation. Under the first heading, “Initial Setup,” the first step is “Download Instructions.” Clicking on this link takes you to the Download page.

The trick here is to skip the first section of the Download page, which tells how to find the “Source Code,” and instead jump down to the second section, called “Binaries.” If you try to start with the source code, you will have to compile it in order to make your own executable binary files. The compiling of software can be a complicated process, so I ignored the following dire warnings in the “Binaries” section:

“These binaries are unofficial - they are not endorsed by the core OpenSimulator development team and so we cannot guarantee their authenticity. If you use them, please don’t necessarily expect support from the community.”

Ignoring the warning, I went ahead and downloaded the ZIP file for the binary for Windows, called “OpenSim 0.5.6 Alpha” (dated 22 May 2008). I then unzipped the files into my MyDocuments directory (fortunately I have an old version of WinZip installed on my computer). Unzipping automatically puts all of the files into the right places within a sub-directory called “bin” (for “binaries”).

Configuring OpenSim for Standalone Mode

Now go back to the User Docs section of the OpenSim website. Skip the Build Instructions, which tell how to build and compile OpenSim from source. It is unnecessary to build since we are using the pre-built binaries. Instead, go directly to the Configuration page, which tells how to get your OpenSim server up and running.

The Configuration page starts with a section called “OpenSim configuration file.” Reading this section (and the page it links to) might make you think that you will need to create a file called OpenSim.ini, which manages the simulator configuration. If you look at the files in the “bin” directory, you will at first see that there is no “Opensim.ini” file, but only an “Opensim.ini.example” file. So it might seem that you will need to copy OpenSim.ini.example to OpenSim.ini, and then edit it to set the proper configuration. But in fact you need do nothing at all. Just run OpenSim as described below, and it will automatically create the OpenSim.ini file.

The next short section of the Configuration page is called “database.” This section got me thinking I would have to download and install the default SQLite database program. I did that, but it turned out to be unnecessary, since SQLite is already incorporated in the OpenSim program. Not knowing that, I ran SQLite to see how it works, and discovered that it is a minimal command-line tool for making databases. But in reading further down the OpenSim Configuration page, I found no instructions concerning the database, so I decided to launch the program to see where and how it would ask for a connection to a database. I was surprised to see that it worked fine without my having to install or configure any database at all. I then read more about the SQLite program, and learned that it is designed to be directly incorporated into other software programs. Thus SQLite has been built in to the OpenSim program. (It seems that even the data is stored somewhere inside OpenSim, since after creating a few in-world objects, I couldn’t find any separate files that might be storing the data.)

So there is in fact nothing whatsoever that you need to do to configure OpenSim for standalone mode, before actually running the program.

Starting up OpenSim in Standalone Mode

To start the OpenSim program, look in the “bin” directory, and find the file called “Opensim.exe.” Double-click on the icon for this file in order to launch the OpenSim program.

(Note that on computers running under Vista, the system Administrator must launch the OpenSim program. To do this, you must first be the user that is Administrator, then right-click on the executable file and chose “Open as Administrator.” Vista makes every little task so much more complicated, and in many cases downright impossible. Their bad.)

When the OpenSim program starts up it opens a console window, with a Command Line Interface, in the middle of your screen. The console displays a long series of commands as it runs through them. It begins by announcing a discouraging series of errors, but apparently these errors are relatively minor, because the program ends up working despite them.

The OpenSim program runs for a while in the console and then stops at the first of a series of prompts, concerning the sim configuration. Look again at the Configuration page and find the section entitled “Standalone Mode.” This section describes how to answer these prompts, but all you have to do is hit “return” each time, to accept the default. As I remember, you just repeatedly hit ”return” up until the point at which the console asks you to define a user, by prompting for first name, then for last name, and then for password. (My memory is fuzzy: does it also prompt for the name of the sim?)

Your simulator is now running. The console will sit idle until it receives further instructions, showing the following prompt:

Region# :

Leaving the sim running with the console open, you must then connect to it with the viewer.

Connecting the Viewer to the Standalone OpenSim

The next steps involve logging in to your Standalone OpenSim by using an appropriate Second Life viewer. The process is exactly the same as for connecting to any of the OpenSim grids, as I have described in my blog post Touring the Open Source Grids.

Create a new shortcut to the Second Life viewer, and then right-click on the shortcut to open the “Properties” tab. Edit the “Target” box to add, after the path-name of the executable file, the “switches” as given on the Configuration page. The shortcut “Target” box will thus contain the entire following text (including the quotation marks):

“C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe” -loginuri http://127.0.0.1:9000/ -loginpage http://127.0.0.1:9000/?method=login

Click on the shortcut to launch the Second Life viewer. This will open the standard viewer login page, but with a special login section at the top of the page (this section is called up by the “-loginpage” switch added in the shortcut Target box). Enter the avatar name and password, and if all goes well the viewer will log you in. You should find yourself in the default Ruth avatar, standing on a small round island, surrounded by a vast blue sea.

In some cases during login I get a message telling me I am being diverted to a nearby region, or asking me to click on teleport, but in such cases I end up landing on the same small island.

I got this to work fine both on an XP desktop computer, and a Vista laptop. But when I tried to install it at work on an XP behind a company firewall, the login process failed. I am supposedly set to be the administrator on my work pc, but for some reason the viewer is unable to log in to the simulator, even though both are running on the same laptop.

Playing around with Standalone OpenSim

So what can you do on your new free sim? To change your avatar, use the OpenSim avatar editing process which I’ve described in Touring the Open Source Grids. You must open inventory, right-click to create new body parts and new clothes, and then wear them in order to edit them. However, each time I log back in I am Ruth again, and must put the body parts and clothes back on one by one.

I created a few prim boxes with textures, and then logged out. They are still there whenever I log back in, so created objects appear to be stable.

I tried to terraform the land, but this function seems disabled. I was told that the simplified standalone database cannot store land contours. However, it is possible to set all of the land in the entire sim at the same elevation, thus giving your avatar a much greater realm than that small round island. Open the console window, and type after the “Region# :” prompt, the command “terrain fill X”, where X is the terrain elevation in meters, as follows:

Region# : terrain fill 25

If you do this with the console opened in the foreground and your sim in the background, you will see the island transform instantly into a flat sim.

To see a list of additional commands, type “help” in the console window, as follows:

Region# : help

In addition, a specific list of terrain commands can be obtained by typing “terrain help.” However, since the simplified standalone database reportedly cannot store detailed terrain data, it would seem likely that most of these terrain commands will fail to work in standalone mode.

Shutting down OpenSim

To shut down your sim, first quit the viewer, as you do when logging out of Second Life.

Then shut down OpenSim, by typing “quit” after the console prompt. “Exit” will also work. After running a few shutdown commands, the console window will close by itself.

Questions and Comments are Welcome

I’ve gone into more detail that is strictly necessary to get OpenSim working in Standalone mode, because some of this information may be useful for understanding OpenSim and going further with it.

I am interested in any and all questions, comments or other feedback you may have. Please transmit to me any problems or suggestions. You can either post a comment to this article, or send an email to dantonsideways(at)yahoo(dot)com, or IM me in Second Life.