Installing from source

MS Windows

OpenSim requires either the .Net framework version 2.0, or the latest Mono. It supports the following compilers:

• Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition (note: not Visual C++)
• mono

Note for people who just downloaded the sources from http://dist.opensimulator.org/ (the "Downloads" link on the left) be advised that some important things are missing (like MySQL template scripts). For such features, you must download using svn!

Subversion Repository

1. Get the nightly build source code from the svn repository:

http://opensimulator.org/svn/opensim/trunk

2. Get 0.4.5.2 Stable version from svn repository:

svn co http://opensimulator.org/svn/opensim/tags/0.4.5.2-stable opensim

Building

2. In the top-level directory, run the 'runprebuild.bat' file. This will create both a VS2005 solution file, and a nant build file.

3. Open the resulting sln file with visual studio, and build it there, or if you prefer to use nant, run nant in the same top-level directory. This will build the executables.

If you don't care about physics (walking on prims, etc), ignore the rest of this section.

Physics

Open Dynamics Engine (ODE)

If you want to implement collision-based physics, OpenDynamicsEngine (ODE) is the furthest along at the moment (9/07). It is not fully supported, but is starting to work somewhat reliably using a small number of regions per sim.

As installed from svn, ODE does not work on all platforms. If you get an ODE-related crash, and/or an ode.dll not found type of error (which can occur even though the dll is present!), try using the debug version of the dll, available here:

http://www.squiggle.com/opensim/ode-debug.dll

Rename it ode.dll and put it in .\bin, replacing the stock ode.dll.

If you do want to try to build ode from source, follow the directions on PhysicsEngines.

You can also try building ode.dll from the latest version of the source (http://www.ode.org/; make sure to enable trimesh)

Running

Recent versions of OpenSim come without an OpenSim.ini file. Copy the OpenSim.ini.example file to OpenSim.ini before making any changes.

Double-click on the OpenSim.exe executable file in the bin directory. This will start up OpenSim in standalone mode.

The debugger in VS2005 C# may be used to step through the code. For those that use a Cygwin shell, you may find that one or more dll's have permissions that cause problems running. Most find that a "chmod 777 *" from the bin directory solves this.

Physics can be invoked by adding the appropriate line to the [Startup] section of OpenSim.ini. For ODE, that would be:

physics = OpenDynamicsEngine

You can also add a command line option to a shortcut, or run from a command prompt with:

-physics=OpenDynamicsEngine

Windows Vista

To run on Windows Vista, you must first disable Windows Firewall. Under the new "Start" button of Vista, select "Control panel". Then double-click "Windows Firewall". In the window that pops up, on the left column, select "Turn Windows Firewall on or off". You will have to give permission for this to run, then select the option "Off (not recommended)". Click "OK" and exit from the Windows Firewall window.

If you have McAfee SecurityCenter, see the description below.

Once all the security features are disabled, right click on OpenSim.exe and select "Run as administrator". This will pop up a window asking permission, select "Allow". Your OpenSim server should run in a DOS-like window and accept connections.

McAfee Security

McAfee Security does not allow applications to listen on ports not explicitly specified. You have two options: 1) disable firewall protection all together, 2) enable OpenSim.exe to be able to open ports.

Disable firewall

Open McAfee SecurityCenter. Select "Internet & Network". In the lower left corner is a small link to "Configure...". Select this. In the right side of the window, select the bar that says "Firewall protection is enabled". Here you can select "Off".

Enable OpenSim.exe to open ports

Open McAfee SecurityCenter. Select "Internet & Network". In the lower left corner is a small link to "Configure...". Select this. In the right side of the window, select the bar that says "Firewall protection is enabled". Select the "Advanced..." button. This will pop up a new window.

In the new window, on the left side, select "Program Permissions." In the middle on the right side of the window, select the "Add Allowed Program" button. Use the browser that pops up to find the OpenSim executable and select it.

Finally, select "OK" and exit the McAfee SecurityCenter window.

Linux/Mac OS X/FreeBSD

Please note that the current (as of 2007-11-23) SVN will not work on 64bit linux systems when built. You will need to use the binary build further down the page. Installing and running on x86-64

Install Steps for Unix Platforms

Steps to get packages that are needed to compile the source.

FreeBSD 6.2

su
cd /usr/ports/devel/subversion/ && make install clean (you may also need to rebuild apr-svn if this step fails)
cd /usr/ports/lang/mono/ && make install clean
cd /usr/ports/devel/nant/ && make install clean
cd /usr/ports/databases/sqlite3/ && make install clean
cd /usr/ports/x11-toolkits/libgdiplus/ && make install clean
cd /opensim/installation/directory/
svn co http://opensimulator.org/svn/opensim/trunk opensim
cd opensim
./runprebuild.sh
nant

For ODE Physics you must do the following:

cd /usr/ports/graphics/libGL/ && make install clean
cd /usr/ports/graphics/libGLU/ && make install clean
cd /opensim/installation/directory/
svn co http://opensimulator.org/svn/opensim/trunk opensim-libs
cd opensim-libs/unmanaged/OpenDynamicsEngine/
./configure --enable-shared
make
mv ./ode/src/libode.so /opensim/installation/directory/opensim/bin/

Ubuntu 7.10

sudo aptitude install subversion nant mono mono-gmcs libmono-microsoft8.0-cil libmono-system-runtime2.0-cil
svn co http://opensimulator.org/svn/opensim/trunk opensim
cd opensim
./runprebuild.sh
nant

MacOSX

• OS X does not come packaged with subversion, so you will need to either install it or access the repository from a computer that does have subversion.
• You'll also need to install Mono.
• The version of Mono in MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts) seems to be out of date and produced compilation errors on my system. You may have better luck installing the newest package from http://www.mono-project.com/Downloads
• Even with the newer version, there's a config problem with NAnt. There's a blog post here: http://bleepsoft.com/tyler/index.php?itemid=82 which explains how to fix the script (the blog post shows the path for 1.1.18 -- you'll need to replace this with 1.2.5 if you install the latest version from mono-project.com).

svn co http://opensimulator.org/svn/opensim/trunk opensim
cd opensim
./runprebuild.sh
nant

Note: The libopenjpeg-libsl-...so is not working on Mac. For this reason you should download the newest libsecondlife from http://www.libsecondlife.org/, and build your own libopenjpeg library. If you use this instead of the SVN version, your sim will work fine. (Can someone confirm this?)

If you encounter any errors while trying this, check the Troubleshooting page for help.

Running (Mono)

Recent versions of OpenSim come without an OpenSim.ini file. Copy the OpenSim.ini.example file to OpenSim.ini before making any changes.

cd bin
mono OpenSim.exe

to invoke ODE, add the option:

-physics=OpenDynamicsEngine

to the mono OpenSim.exe line

or add physics = OpenDynamicsEngine to the [Startup] section of OpenSim.ini. Same deal for other physics engines, when available.

Physics (Unix)

If you want to implement collision-based physics, OpenDynamicsEngine (ODE) is the furthest along at the moment (9/07). It is not fully supported, but is starting to work somewhat reliably using a small number of regions per sim.

Open Dynamics Engine (ODE)

As installed from svn, ODE does not work on all platforms. If you get an ODE-related crash, and/or a libode.so not found type of error, you will need to build libode from source.

Remove libode.so from the ./bin folder. (Note that subsequent svn updates may replace it again; best fix is to copy your built libode.so to bin). Do NOT remove ode.net.dll! Download the latest source packages from http://www.ode.org/. When compiling, make sure to use the following configure options:

--with-trimesh=gimpact 
--enable-shared

Make sure the configure script confirms these choices, and always compile with single precision (I believe that's the default). Try make -k if you get errors relating to drawstuff, test*, or openGL. make install should put libode.so in the proper place (usually /usr/local/lib), and it should be seen by opensim (ode.net.dll)

External tutorials and howtos

Spanish howto: Opensim in GNU/Linux

Binary releases

Nightly builds, in tar-gzip format:

http://ruth.petitbe.be/build/

The following packages and their dependencies are required to run OpenSim on a default Debian 4 netinstall:

• mono
• libmono-corlib2.0-cil
• libmono-sqlite2.0-cil
• libmono-system-web2.0-cil
• libmono-microsoft8.0-cil
• libmono-system-runtime2.0-cil