[Opensim-dev] User services refactoring status

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Bryan Derksen wrote:
> On 04/01/2010 9:02 AM, diva at metaverseink.com wrote:
>> Unless someone steps 
>> in and takes care of the SQLite connector, I'm afraid it will go the way 
>> of the dinosaurs.
> 
> I've had an SQLite-based personal standalone sandbox for some time now
> as the full extent of my OpenSim administration and I figured with this
> possibility impending I should see what it's like for a relative newbie
> like me with no MySQL experience to set up a standalone using it. I'm on
> Vista 64.
> 
> It wound up taking me about three hours to get fully up and running.
> Installing MySQL itself was trivial but once I had it installed I was at
> a bit of a loss on how to configure it. I didn't even really know what I
> needed to do, let alone how to do it. The connection strings in the
> default ini (from OSGrid's install) suggested I should set up have a
> database named "opensim" and a user named "opensim" to go along with it
> but there wasn't much else to go on.
> 
> I tried installing Workbench and fumbled around with that for a while
> until I decided I was stuck down a dead-end. I did some more
> web-searching, and finally found
> http://opensimuser.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/opensim-mysql-install-guide/
> - it's a year-old blog post and it didn't quite match up with what I
> wound up needing to do but it pointed me in all the right directions and
> I got the database set up.
> 
> Then I ran into a final hitch hunting through the various opensim ini
> files to track down every place I needed to set up MySQL's connection
> string. I missed StandaloneCommon.ini, causing my opensim to go through
> an endless cycle of requesting baked avatar textures and not recognizing
> that it had received them. Annoying but not too hard to catch on the
> second go-through.
> 
> If you do wind up dropping SQLite, here's what would have made the
> process go much easier for me:
> * A "cookbook" setup guide like that blog post to be prominently linked
> on the wiki (perhaps put a link right in the example ini itself). To
> avoid reliance on the third party software used in this particular
> example, perhaps a script to copy and paste into the MySQL command line
> would be better.

While you were researching, did you come across the wiki page linked off the configuration instructions

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Mysql-config

?  I realize now that when I was last rewriting the configuration instructions I foolishly assumed 
that this page was up-to-date - of course, it's not.

I guess I also implicitly assumed that the example mysql strings in the ini would be enough to go 
on.  It doesn't sound like it.

> * Would it be possible to bring the database-related configuration
> options closer together in the ini file, to make it easier to set them
> all up properly? Perhaps have one "default" connection string that will
> be used if you leave the others blank, to avoid having to put the same
> name and password scattered throughout?

I agree - changing all the strings is a pita.  Some kind of default with specific exceptions if 
required sounds good to me.

> * I haven't tried making a backup yet but that's going to be another new
> learning experience. Some sort of cookbook/script for this would be
> welcome too.

This may be overkill - if you want to back up the whole database we're just talking about mysql's 
native backup procedures (for which there is, naturally, tons of existing documentation on the web). 
  More specifically, individual regions and inventory can be backed up using OAR and IAR 
respectively - these should be googleable.

> 
> All in all, not as bad as I feared. But I'm only part noob so I can see
> this being a stumbling point for many.
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-- 
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
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