[Opensim-users] Phoenix Viewer hangs at "WaitingforRegionhandshake"

Mon Jan 23 00:40:13 UTC 2012

Getting the networking for opensim to work is the single hardest part of
setting up a system, IMO.  If you get this solved, everything else will be
simpler ever after.

Somewhere up there I saw a 10.x.x.x address.  I learned through
excruciating trial and error that Opensim doesn't play nicely on a network
with 1-to-1 NATing, even if you have the right ports open on the firewall,
even if you have the right settings in your ini files.  It seems opensim
resolves the internal IP address of the machine to send the UDP packets no
matter what IP address you put in the .ini files.  The viewer then receives
the UDP packets containing that internal IP address and tries to connect,
but from outside the network the internal address never resolves, of
course, so you just get stuck at the waiting for region handshake.

The only solution I found on campus where we have 1-to-1 NATing was to put
the server in the DMZ and have a static external IP address assigned, then
everything worked swimmingly.  At home on FleepGrid, I also got a static IP
address assigned from my ISP and voila all my problems were solved.

For reference, this is what an entry looks like from my region.ini file:

[FleepGrid Plaza]
RegionUUID = a6a2136d-daa1-4f4e-a136-fd26c913ecfa
Location = 9013,9013
InternalAddress = 0.0.0.0
InternalPort = 9000
AllowAlternatePorts = False
ExternalHostName = fleepgrid.com

I hope some of that is helpful and 99% of the time when you get stuck at
the region handshake part, it's a UDP packets problem, so  you may want to
speak with your networking admin or network tech support if you're stuck.

Best of luck!

- Chris/Fleep

uChris M. Collins (SL/OS: Fleep Tuque)
Center for Simulations & Virtual Environments Research (UCSIM)
UCIT Instructional & Research Computing
University of Cincinnati
406A Zimmer Hall
315 College Drive
PO BOX 210088
Cincinnati, OH 45221-0088
chris.collins at uc.edu
(513) 556-3018

http://ucsim.uc.edu

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 1:19 PM, Gary Beck <gab4gab at gmail.com> wrote:

> **
> Thanks for that info Nicky.   I wish I'd known that a year ago.
>
> Looking in Imprudence.log the first appearance of the region UDP
> address:port was in a line with this heading:
>
> LLCircuit::addCircuitData for
>
> The log gives a fairly detailed account of what's going on during a
> handshake failure.
>
> - Gary
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Nicky Perian <nickyperian at yahoo.com>
> *To:* opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> *Sent:* Sunday, January 22, 2012 12:47 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Opensim-users] Phoenix Viewer hangs at
> "WaitingforRegionhandshake"
>
>  If not already done, look at the viewer log. It should have some uri
> info at the message output point.
>
>   ------------------------------
> *From:* Gary Beck <gab4gab at gmail.com>
> *To:* opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> *Sent:* Sunday, January 22, 2012 10:27 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [Opensim-users] Phoenix Viewer hangs at "Waiting
> forRegionhandshake"
>
> Kenneth,
>   If you're logging on to the region that uses port 9000 that's the port
> that will be used.
>   Maybe a step by step on the handshake process will give a clue -
>
>       Your server passes the IP address of the region paired with the port
> number to the viewer.
>       You specify:
>           ExternalHostName = "
> ec2-46-51-xxx-xxx.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com"
>       Your server resolves that to an address and passed that (not the URL
> string) along to the viewer.
>       This could cause a problem if at the server the ExternalHostName is
> resolved to something other than the proper external IP address (such as
> the local IP address.)
>       The viewer takes the passes address/port and attempts to converse
> with the server using it.
>       Then if too much time passes the viewer will declare a failure.
>
> Typically the problem is either wrong address used or port blocked.
> Because you're confident the port is open now I'd look into the address
> being passed.  Unfortunately the log messages related to the regions either
> show you 'resolved local address:port' or 'unresolved URL address:port'
> which give no clue.  Perhaps someone knows a good tool to track down the
> actual address passed to the viewer.
> - Gary
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kenneth" <stretchgargan at gmail.com>
> To: <opensim-users at lists.berlios.de>
> Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2012 10:47 AM
> Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] Phoenix Viewer hangs at "Waiting
> forRegionhandshake"
>
>
> > On 08/01/2012 22:38, Gary Beck wrote:
> >> Kenneth,
> >>    Your region parameters looks fine.  From what you've included it's
> clear that you're reaching the TCP port 9000.
> >>    To complete the handshake process and communicate with the region
> you also need to open port 9000 for UDP.  The handshake is there to verify
> that UDP communication is working.
> >>    Hope that helps.
> >> - Gary
> >
> > I opened UDP 9000 too (at first, I only had TCP 9000 open) on the Amazon
> firewall. No joy.
> >
> > I've verified connectivity on TCP and UDP 9000 by using NetCat on both
> sides.
> >
> > Does it use any other ports?
> >
> > K.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> > https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>
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