Quickstart

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General Setup

Setting up your own server can be a bit of a daunting task. It seems very complex and technical, and in a sense, it can be. However, if you follow this quickstart guide, you will have your server up and running within minutes, and you will be ready to build in your own sim.

What You Need To Know

First of all

It is very important to remember that OpenSim is not a finished product. It is always being worked on, and new features are coming out all the time, and bugs are being fixed. Because of this, things can change radically, or even break from one version to another.

OpenSimulator is alpha software, so it's not even beta yet.So expect the software to break from time to time.

Another thing to remember is although it looks, and for the most part, works like SecondLife, it is not SecondLife. There are some very important differences, and there are even things that are intentionally left out. And there are things that can only be done in OpenSim, and not in SecondLife.

Modes

Simply put, OpenSimulator (Opensim for short) can run in two modes. Grid mode, and standalone mode.

Standalone mode means that it is simply running on your own PC, and it is not part of a grid. It is advised that this is how you start, because this is easiest way to run a server.

Grid mode means that it is part of a grid. If you want your server to be part of a grid (see the grid list), then it will take some additional configuration which we can not cover here, because it is different for each grid.

There are additional modes, but you can look into them at a later time.

Databases

OpenSim depends heavily on its database. Without it, OpenSim can not run.

By default, OpenSim comes with SQLite and will use that , but if you want, you can choose another database engine like MySQL or MSSQL.

What You Need

Before you start, you will need to have a few things ready. These things are:

• A copy of the latest OpenSim, you can download it here (get the one under "Current Release")
• A program to unpack compressed files with, 7Zip works well, and is available for most operating systems.