Connecting a region to OSGrid is a rewarding experience – many users however run into the difficulty of instructions being out of date; and while this set too will eventually go stale – they should at least be current for the next few months. Before getting started – you need to decide on a few things; information about your region (what to call it, where to put it on the map), where you will host it (at home, or on a dedicated server)

OSGrid is a free OpenSimulator network – connecting a region and using the central services is done free without charge (however donations to keep the infrastructure running are appreciated.)

First – this guide assumes Windows, and also assumes you are hosting from home. Users running in more professional setups will need to adapt accordingly. You may be able to skip a large portion of this setup procedure, by using the automated ‘OSGrid Region Launcher’ utility, you can download a copy of this experimental tool from the OSGrid Website; however this has not been confirmed to work with all users (nonetheless, I recommend it as a first step).

Preparing your region

Before we undergo the region setup process, you need to know your internet facing IP address, have setup appropriate port forwards. OpenSimulator by default will use Port 9000 on TCP and UDP; if you are behind a router you need to forward these ports to the machine that will be running the simulator instance. If you don’t know how to do this – see experimental tool listed above; or consult instructions for your router. You will also need to configure your router to enable ‘NAT Loopback’ – some support this by default, some don’t. If yours doesn’t, you may be out of luck and will need to host somewhere else (see my article on that topic).

You will need to gather two bits of information about your hosting environment, first is your internet-facing IP address – if you do not know it, visit this page. The second is some spare coordinates on the OSGrid World Map. If you don’t know them (or dont care to work some out), you can use this page here. Record both of these bits of information, because you will need them in a moment.

Download a copy of the OSGrid Package. It’s usually about 40mb, and can be currently found at this address: http://www.osgrid.org/elgg/pg/utilities/software

Unzip this package; and look for ‘OpenSim.32BitLaunch.exe’ – ignore the other files within the directory (regardless of whether you have a 64bit or 32bit system) – right click on it, and hit ‘Run As Administrator’; text will scroll by for a little while, then you will be asked a series of questions, in the format “Question Name [default]: _” – the following is how to answer these questions.

Questions

• New Region Name []:
  This is the name of the region that you want, it should be less than 64 characters long – and cannot conflict with any existing registered region.
• Region UUID[random]:
  You can ignore this, just hit enter.
• Region Location [1000,1000]:
  Enter here the region coordinates you wrote down above – exactly as printed in the ‘autocoord’ web page – that is, two numbers with a comma between them and no spaces. (The first number is the X coordinate, second the Y)
• Internal IP address [0.0.0.0]:
  Hit enter here – 0.0.0.0 means use ‘any availible IP’; this should be your choice unless you know better.
• Internal Port [9000]:
  This should be 9000, hit enter to use the default.
• Allow alternate ports [False]:
  If you are using port forwarding, leave this setting as ‘False’ and just hit enter.
• External Host Name [SYSTEMIP]:
  For this setting you need to put in your internet-facing IP address (or DNS address); you can use the exact output of the page listed above.
• Master Avatar UUID
  Skip this setting – just press enter.
• Master Avatar First Name
  Enter the first name of your avatar name here – my Avatar Name is “Adam Frisby”, so here I would enter “Adam” (no quotes)
• Master Avatar Last Name
  Enter the lastname of your avatar – eg; “Frisby” (again, without quotes)

With a bit of luck, your region should have registered with the grid and is now accessible. Login to the grid, and try teleport to your region via the world map. If it connected successfully; then that is all you need to do – your region is now online.

Chances are however, something went wrong.

Troubleshooting

The following are the common sources of problems when hosting a region from home

• “Remote Destination Timed Out”, or “Remote Destination is not responding”
  This error means that your port forwarding was not done correctly; and that the grid services were not able to connect to your region on the TCP port. Double check your port forwarding, and that your external hostname is correct.
• “Could not connect to region“, or “(done)“, or “Despite our best efforts, something has gone wrong“.
  This is a more insidious error, it means the grid was able to contact your region server on the TCP port, however the client was unable to contact your region server – double check your port forwarding and check that you have NAT Loopback enabled. If it still gives you problems; your router is incompatible with OpenSim – you may want to read this article on the opensim wiki for additional pointers.