06. Connecting to the OSGrid

To connect a region or grid to the OSGrid you need to follow the steps below. However, it should be remembered that when you connect to the OSGrid you will be using their UGAIM servers, and they have no knowledge of you, or of any other users you may have created in your grid, nor of the builds you may have on your regions. All of your users will have to create accounts on the OSGrid, and they will lose all access to any inventory they may have while on your independent region or grid. You can get your builds over quite easily by using save-oar to save the prims on your regions, and using load-oar to bring them back in after connecting to the OSGrid.

If you have a well-established region or grid, with multiple users, then it may be a better solution to use Hypergrid to connect to the OSGrid, rather than a direct connection. See the Hypergrid tutorial for details.

Step 1. Create an Account on the OSGrid
Go to the OSGrid website, and click on Create Account in the left menu. Your avatar in the OSGrid will have the name you choose here, so choose wisely. Make a note of your OSGrid name and password, you will need these later.

Step 2. Find an Unused Region Name and Unused Location
You need to check if the name you want for your region has not been used by anyone else. So, choose Region List from the left menu. Whether it is free, or if you need to use another region name, make a note of your region name, you will need it later.

Next, click on Map on the left menu. It may be quite slow to load all the map. You are looking for a grid cell that is free, check to see if there is a small i for information symbol in a cell or not, if there isn't, then it is free. You then need to make a note of its grid location. To find this, click on the i symbol in some nearby cells, to see what their location is, and you will be able to work out the coordinates of the cell you want (I chose 9998, 10002). Make a note of the coordinates of your chosen location, you will need them later.

Step 3: Edit your Region File
You now need to make some edits to your region file in the Regions folder of OpenSim. Make a copy of this file somewhere safe first, in case you wish to revert later. Make the following changes (using your own region name and coordinates of course):

sim_name="WhateverYouLike" sim_location_x="9998" sim_location_y="10002"

Save the file

Step 4: Edit your OpenSim.ini File
You now need to make a few edits to your OpenSim.ini file (again, copy it somewhere safe first, in case you wish to revert later). Search for the following parameters, and change them as follows:

gridmode = true
asset_database = "grid"
see_into_this_sim_from_neighbor = True
serverside_object_permissions = True
grid_server_url = http://osgrid.org:8001/
grid_send_key = "1234"
grid_recv_key = "1234"
user_server_url = http://osgrid.org:8002/
user_send_key = "1234"
user_recv_key = "1234"
asset_server_url = http://osgrid.org:8003/
inventory_server_url = http://osgrid.org:8004/

Save the file.

Step 5: Launch OpenSim
You do not need the UGAIM servers for connecting to OSGrid, so you can now just go right ahead and launch OpenSim.exe You may see lots of errors rushing by in yellow and red, this is to be expected, but hopefully, the server should eventually complete, pause, and you will have the Region #: prompt. This indicates that your server is now connected to the OSGrid!

Step 6: Connecting your Viewer
Open your hippo viewer, select the Grids button, and choose OSGrid from the Select a Grid drop-down box. You might want to select this as the default from now on, if you expect to be on OSGrid for some time. Next, login using the User Name and Password that you chose when you created your OSGrid account earlier. You may now even see your region listed in the Region list on the main screen, if you do, select it. If not, then for the Start Location, choose and type in the name of your region.

If you are using the SL Viewer, use this at the end of the Target for the login URI: -loginuri http://osgrid.org:8002 -loginpage http://osgrid.org/loginscreen.php -helperuri http://osgrid.org/

Hit Connect, and you should be in your region on the OSGrid.