Sim-on-a-Stick for OpenSim Development and Testing

Posted on May 17, 2016 by bat

Sim-on-a-Stick-Wifi
Ener Hax’s “Sim-on-a-Stick” (http://simonastick.com) is a very useful prebuilt setup that allows a local copy of OpenSimulator to be quickly used for a new development or test environment. It can be used to create a fresh setup each time tests are needed, and to try out, for example, OpenSim Archive (OAR) or OpenSim Inventory Archive (IAR) files. Sim-on-a-Stick is made up of:

Update to OpenSim 0.8.2.1

The config-include/MyWorld.ini file provided with Sim-on-a-Stick 0.8.0 postfixes version needs to be altered to work properly with the latest (at the time of writing) version of OpenSim Diva Disribition (D2) which is 0.8.2.1 (24th December 2015). In the [Startup] section turn off CombineContiguousRegions as the “megaregion” mechanism is now replaced with the more flexible “varregions” and the mega-region facility will be removed from OpenSim 0.9.0. And add a new [Hypergrid] section (e.g. just after [GridService] section) to give the HomeURI and Gatekeeper URI for Hypergrid. 

[Startup]
    ; CombineContiguousRegions will be removed from OpenSim 0.9
    CombineContiguousRegions = false

[Hypergrid]
    HomeURI = "http://127.0.0.1:9100"
    GatekeeperURI = "http://127.0.0.1:9100"

It is also possible that some Windows .NET4 environments might have problems loading some modules…. reporting an error with…

An attempt was made to load an assembly from a network location which would have caused the assembly to be sandboxed in previous versions of the .NET Framework. This release of the .NET Framework does not enable CAS policy by default, so this load may be dangerous. If this load is not intended to sandbox the assembly, please enable the loadFromRemoteSources switch. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155569 for more information.

A fix was made to OpenSim in bin/OpenSim.exe.config (and bin/Robust.exe.config though that is not used in Sim-on-a-Stick) on 23-Nov-2013 (git master a68d1fa) for this, adding the following line to the <runtime> section…

    <loadFromRemoteSources enabled="true" />

If you see this error in Sim-on-a-Stick, check this line is present in the bin/OpenSim.exe.config. If not, add it and run again.

When you run Sim-on-a-Stick for the first time, it might also be worth setting an “Outfit” in the viewer.

Sim-on-a-Stick-Initial-Avatar

Availability of Updated Sim-on-a-Stick 0.8.2.1

For convenience, a modified Sim-on-a-Stick based on the 0.8.0 post-fixes zipped single region version (SoaS08PF.zip), updated to OpenSim D2 diva-r08210.zip and with the MyWorld.ini and bin/OpenSim.config.exe changes above incorporated is available at:

The directory also contains the modified MyWorld.ini and bin/OpenSim.exe.config files in case you want to take those to add into your own Sim-on-a-Stick setup.

Sim-on-a-Stick with OpenVCE OAR

A typical example of the use of Sim-on-a-Stick for quick testing is this fresh copy setup and then a test load of the “OpenVCE” OAR from

Sim-on-a-Stick-with-OpenVCE-OAR

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1 Response to Sim-on-a-Stick for OpenSim Development and Testing

  1. bat says:
    December 14, 2016 at 16:22

    Others have found that larger assets, for example in a loaded OAR, may not load correctly and throw MySQL errors. This can easily be fixed by changing the my.ini file that is loaded when MySQL starts.

    http://www.owenkelly.net/1837/sim-on-a-stick-linda-kellie-and-mysql/

    • Open the SoaS folder.
    • Find the MySQL folder and open that.
    • Inside there you will find a file called my.ini Open this with Notepad++ or a similar text editor.
    • Find line 63 where you will see a line saying # SERVER SECTION.
    • Below that, on about line 73, you will see port=3307.
    • Create a blank line below this and write max_allowed_packet=64M

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