As mentioned earlier, Sim-OnDemand employs a simple Play-Pause-Play music player metaphor for its operation. Thus Launching and Pausing of the OpenSim server are the only two operations possible with Sim-OnDemand launcher application.
The launcher is invoked using the run.bat on Windows and run.sh on Unix like systems.
A simple one time Setup/configuration is to be performed to make the launcher ready for the operations.
OneTime
Setup: Credentials
Launching
While launching for the first time, you will be prompted a few setting
that is applicable throughout the life of the OpenSim server.
The
GridMode settings dropdown controls if the Server is going to be a standalone
server or going to be hooked up to a public grid(OsGrid for now).
The
First Name, Last Name, Password fields sets the Master avatar FirstName,
LastName and password in Standalone mode.
If you choose GridMode as 'Public Grid OsGrid', the FirstName, LastName, must match your OsGrid login FirstName
and Lastname.
The Number Of Regions field controls the number of regions you wish to have on your OpenSim server(Maximum of 9 - an arbitrary limit).
The
Region Name Prefix field controls the Region Name of your OpenSim
regions. Number suffix starting from 1 are added to the Region Name
Prefix as name of each Region. For example if your Region Name Prefix
is 'Utopia' then on the OpenSim server the regions will be named as
'Utopia1', 'Utopia2' etc.
EC2 Instance Type field determines the type of EC2 instance launched. Small( the default) is the cheapest to run. Have a look at the AWS technical specification for an educated choice.
EBS
volume Size filed controls the size(numeric in GB) of the persistent store. Bigger the
storage, more textures and assets you can store. Bigger the storage,
more costly it will be.
Every
Field is set with meaningful default values. So if you dont understand
it, leave it as such. Once you have entered your settings, all you need
to do to launch your OpenSim server is press the 'Open Sesame' button!
Pausing
When you anticipate that you are not going to use the OpenSim server for a considerable time( anything more than couple of hours, overnight etc) the server can be suspended or paused. The state will be restored upon relaunch.
If you wish to pause your server, just invoke the Sim-OnDemand application launcher. It will automatically load a screen with a Pause button. It is always good idea to invoke the application launcher afresh, as there are memory leaks in the application that will make it sluggish after a while. Just press the Pause button and your server instance will be paused after saving its state.
After pressing the Pause button, wait for a few( 20-30) seconds for the browser to respond. The launcher application displaying a screen with Launch button indicates that the server instance is successfully paused.
Make sure your instance is paused when you don't need them to avoid unexpected shocking bill. Remember you are charged by the hour and the runaway instance could be very nasty on the bill. Remember that the Pause button also indicates that server is running.
Resuming/Relaunching
If you wish to re-launch a previously paused OpenSim server, just invoke the Sim-OnDemand application launcher. It will automatically launch itself into the relaunch screen. You can relauch the server just by pressing the Launch button. As with initial launch, the EC2 Instance Type field determines the type of EC2 instance launched. Small( the default) is the cheapest to run. Have a look at the AWS technical specification for an educated choice.
The 'Invoke Latest Server Version' option deserves a separate subsection. It is best left unselected for normal relaunch.
Connecting To The OpenSim Server
Connecting via Viewer
The -loginuri and other commandline parameters to be passed to the viewer invocation is displayed when the server is ready. Just copy paste the string and append it appropriately to the 'Windows Shortcut'.
Due to the nature of On-Demand computing service offered by Amazon Web Services, the IP address/hostname of the server instance is different for each launch. This necessiates readjustment of the viewer Shortcut after each launch. Just to mitigate this problem, a permanent alias is setup under ddns.upsl.org. This alias will be constant throughout the life of your OpenSim server. Due to DNS propagation delays, the alias pointing to the present server hostname will take up to 10 minutes after the server is up. The permanent alias based viewer param is handy for including in shortcuts.
Connecting to OpenSim.exe console via VNC
The OpenSim.exe server console
is accessible through VNC. You can either use a VNC client program( like UltraVNC, or SSVNC etc) or via java enabled web browser.
The browser based vnc is secured via ssl.( accessible via http://hostname:5800/ultrasigned.vnc
where hostname is to be substituted by the actual hostname of the
opensim server instance) The client based unsecured VNC is accessible
via http://hostname:5801
When connecting via browser, few security, certificate related prompts/warnings are to be manually overridden.
