[Opensim-users] [opensim-edu] OpenSim services bundle test

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Hi Mimetic & Fleep,

I've finally given your package a try, after losing nights of sleep
getting the individual modules a try.

First, I would like to thank you very much for all your work. For
anyone who wishes to give the external services a try, the fundamental
thing is the readme file you've assembled together — because it
explains *all* necessary steps. The wiki and the individual readme
files are simply incomplete. There are far more steps which I hadn't
found described anywhere. Just for that, the package is worth all
trouble :)

Groups work flawlessly. But as a matter of fact, they always worked.

Offline IMs finally work! I'm not sure if this is supposed to work for
Group Chat IMs as well. And from the code, I'm assuming that
IM-to-email is not implemented, but it should be possible to add that
functionality. How exactly that is supposed to integrate with the
"main" database (specially because I have all these options on a
different server, using a different MySQL database...), I'm not sure
(e.g. making sure that the IM-to-email option on the user preferences,
when checked, actually sends IMs to email — which, in my case, are
done by a _different_ server. I'm not yet sure how to do that!)

Profiles and Search... don't work. When looking at what was happening
(on two different servers — one running Mac OS X and the other
Linux/Cent OS 5.3 — to make sure that the problem was not related to
Mono or the spoecific architecture), this is what I got:

[PROFILE]: Unable to connect to Profile Server
http://btgrid.betatechnologies.info/os_services/profiles/profile.php.
Method avatar_properties_request, params System.Collections.Hashtable.
Exception System.Xml.XmlException: Multiple document element was
detected.  Line 2, position 2.
  at Mono.Xml2.XmlTextReader.ReadStartTag () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Mono.Xml2.XmlTextReader.ReadContent () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Mono.Xml2.XmlTextReader.Read () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at System.Xml.XmlTextReader.Read () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Nwc.XmlRpc.XmlRpcResponseDeserializer.Deserialize
(System.IO.TextReader xmlData) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at Nwc.XmlRpc.XmlRpcRequest.Send (System.String url, Int32 timeout)
[0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at OpenSimProfile.Modules.OpenProfile.OpenProfileModule.GenericXMLRPCRequest
(System.Collections.Hashtable ReqParams, System.String method)
[0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

Sounds cryptic? Not really — I found out that my stupid hosting
provider doesn't have the required XML-RPC library built-in. Ack! (I
just copied & pasted this here because Google will eventually pick it
up sooner or later, and hopefully this message will be helpful for
anyone searching for the same issue. If that's the case, fellow
Google-user, be content, the modules are working, it's just your PHP
which hasn't the XML-RPC library built in).

Workaround? In my case, I'm not really allowed to change the PHP
module, since it's not under my control. Well, I have gone through
this before, and I'm going to try to adapt the code to use the
well-known Incutio XML-RPC library, which is used by WordPress (and
thus about 1/6th of all websites in the world) and thus should be
reasonably efficient and safe. Sadly, of course, it means rewriting a
lot of code, since the approach is rather different. But if I get this
to work I might post a copy of the code somewhere.

Actually, if Mimetic Core is reading this, I would like to ask your
permission to use your module to include it as part of an upcoming
WordPress plugin I'm planning to do. After a terrible experience with
Xoops I vowed never to use it again :-) And while the academic
community is very fond of Moodle — and there are already a lot of
modules working with Moodle doing basically the same thing — 67
million sites run WordPress (http://en.wordpress.com/stats/) so I
believe there might be some interest using it as a backend for
managing a grid. Note that this is a very-long-time project, to which
I'm not going to do "in a moment's notice", since the whole point is
to allow things like authentication, profiles, and social networking
tools (like BuddyPress) and forums all be integrated uniformly into a
single setup. And no, this is not to get into a "CMS war"; and yes,
I'm aware that the same could be achieved — possibly more easily —
starting with Moodle or even Drupal, both of which already have
several modules to integrate with OpenSim.

   - Gwyn

>> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:00 PM, Core (mimetic.core) <core at odosys.net>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm posting a link to a preliminary version of my OpenSim services 'care
>>> package'.  To recap, it contains everything needed to (manually) install
>>> Groups, Profiles, Search and Offline Messages using a single database and is
>>> assembled from existing modules that seem to work the best under most
>>> conditions.  It's not 100% complete as far as detailed instructions go
>>> (which I'm working on) and I still haven't tested it under IIS or on a MAC
>>> (which I'm also working on), but there's a quickstart guide and all the
>>> necessary files are included.  All comments, corrections and contributions
>>> are welcome and desired.  Hopefully someone will find this useful :)
>>>
>>> The file is named 'Opensim_Services.zip' - there's also a checksum/virus
>>> scan log for the properly paranoid...
>>>
>>> http://public.odosys.net/files/opensim/os_modules/
>>>
>>> - Core/Jason
>>> - core at odosys.net
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Education mailing list
>>> Education at list.opensim-edu.org
>>> http://list.opensim-edu.org/listinfo.cgi/education-opensim-edu.org

-- 
"I'm not building a game. I'm building a new country."
  -- Philip "Linden" Rosedale, interview to Wired, 2004-05-08