The OSgrid Region Launcher is a somewhat newish utility I wrote back late August – it’s designed to be a dead-set-simple zero-configuration region launcher for OpenSim. It’ll automatically deploy your own region on OSgrid, hosted on your own computer; and while not perfect – it can be a nifty way of checking out OpenSim without too much hassle. This is a new version of the tool for those who were testing it several weeks ago – version 0.22 brings in a bunch of new features, including confirmed Linux compatibility (and presumably OSX too.)

This tool is a from start-to-finish utility for launching regions, it will automatically negotiate with your router to forward ports as required; and it will handle automatic updates of new versions using the official OSgrid.org Binary Releases. The basic release contains all the features of the default OSgrid binary release (including preconfigured Groups, Physics, Scripts, etc.). Shameless Plug: Obviously this has all the limitations of regions hosted from home – namely bandwidth & network considerations – if you want to host something permanently and reliably with support, come take a look at SimHost.

This new version of the launcher includes the following new features

• Confirmed & Tested Linux Support (and presumably OSX with Mono)
• New Zip Library (uses Ionic.Zip now) – works better on Linux.
• Completely rewritten UI – Now provides a great deal more feedback on what the tool is doing at any specific point in time.
• Ability to manually position a region optionally.
• Basic Input Validation (Bug: Glitchy on Linux – if you cant close the tool, input a few characters into the current field)
• ILMerge’d Release – now just one self-contained .exe

To use the tool, follow the following steps:

1. Drop the .exe in it’s own folder somewhere. Run it.
2. Enter a region name – must be between 1 and 64 alphanumeric characters. Some symbols & UTF8 characters are fine too. Known invalid symbols include: [ ] \r \n.
3. Select either automatic positioning (default), or enter a pair of free coordinate values. X first, followed by Y. Coordinates must be between 0 and 65,535.
4. Enter your Avatar Name on OSgrid.org – Firstname followed by Lastname.
5. Click Launch
6. At this point, the tool will download, unpack and install your region – you may be prompted to perform certain tasks manually (such as if Automatic Port Forwarding fails you may be asked to port forward manually.)
7. Once the OpenSim console appears – you should be good to go.

How to get this tool:

This is an Open Source utility released under a liberal BSD license. The latest source may be obtained via github

Source Code: http://github.com/AdamFrisby/OSGridLauncher

Release Download: http://www.adamfrisby.com/OSGL-r0.22.exe

Enjoy.