Hosting A Virtual Universe on My PC: Summary

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Here is a summary of what I did to get my virtual universe — all sixteen acres of it — up and running. (The full story is here.)

Download the OpenSim software

If you’re using Windows, click on the last file in the list, opensim-0.6.4-TRUNK.zip — but if you’re using Linux, select the file just above it, with the .tar.gz extension.

Before you do anything else — trust me on this, I wasted hours — delete the OpenSim.ini.example file.

Get the real OpenSim.ini

This will will connect you to the OSGrid. You don’t need to change this file at all. The link above doesn’t take you to an actual file, but to the text inside the file. Select all the text, open your Notepad, paste the text in, and “Save As” OpenSim.ini into your OpenSim directory’s bin folder.

Get your IP address

You will need this so that the master grid — OSGrid — knows how to find your computer. Unfortunately, if you’re on a home network with a router, several computers will be sharing the same IP address.

If you have a router, your computer will also have a second IP address — the internal address that the router sets for you, so you can tell the router to route the OpenSim traffic directly to it. You get this by going into your router’s administration panel, often located here. But not always.

Check that your 9000 port is open

This page will show your IP address at the top of the screen, and have a box for you to type your port number. This is where you put “9000.”

Run the OpenSim application, and answer the following questions when it starts:

Region name: Pick any name for your region. It should be two words. Mine was MariaKorolov Home.

Region location coordinates: Pick a free region from this list and type in its X and Y coordinates. The X-coordinate is kind of like the longitude of your region — how far east or west it is — and the Y-coordinate is its latitude, or its north-south location.

Internal IP Address: Hit “enter” to accept the default values, which are 0.0.0.0.

External Host Name: Type in your IP address. If your IP address changes frequently, you might want to get a permanent IP address from DynDNS and use that, instead.

Avatar first name, last name, and password: Use your login settings from the OSGrid. You do have an account on the OSGrid, right? If not, go get one now.

If everything works — you should see the console telling you that it successfully connected the region — you will get the following prompt: “Region (root) # :”

Now just leave this window up, until you’re ready to disconnect.

Fire up Hippo and see if you can log into your region.

To disconnect type “quit” or type “shutdown” if you want to completely abandon your region and let someone else have the coordinates.

Let me know how this works out for you!

Maria Korolov
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