Cafe Bucky

As I have recently written, I’m working on getting a self contained environment together for running OpenSim and LAMP services on a Mac.

In other words, running a virtual world on your Mac off of a USB key.

So far, so good. But … I’m stuck!

I need some help in getting OpenSim and Mono configured. I’m running into a showstopper problem when a user logs in from a viewer. I’ve decided to put up a snapshot of what I have so that some experienced eyes can take a look at the problem.

The Pre-Alpha snapshot is about 240 meg, and you can get it right now.

The snapshot is a Mac disk image (a compressed sparse bundle). Download, uncompress, and mount. It should mount as /Volumes/MacSimStick. All of the main components are under /Volumes/MacSimStick/usr/local.

See the top level README for ports, passwords, layout, etc.

So what does work?

Apache, PHP, MySQL, and the Diva Wifi interface are all doing fine. There are some configuration tweaks to do, and lots of files and directories that can be removed. The goal right now is to get the end to end functionality sorted, and then we can go back and prune & tune. There is a simple minded shell script, Start.sh, at the top level. I expect that anyone toying around with this at this point is going to be in a terminal window, and is comfy with launching apache, mysql, opensim, etc from a command line.

What is the problem?

The problem seems to be something about how Mono deals with the network. I provided a full logging of the problem in /Volumes/MacSimStick/Logs/OpenSim.log. That file shows the full run of Configure.exe, followed by a session of OpenSim.exe.

Some suggested ways to attack this …

Use your own version of Mono against the diva distro in MacSimStick. If that works, then we know we have a problem specific to my install of Mono 2.8.

Did I miss anything in the Mono or OpenSim config files? (probably!)

Could the problem have something to do with virtual network interfaces (such as the one created by Parallels?)

Is the version of Mono just fine, but we find that it works with an older OpenSim distro?

For reference, my Mac is a 2006 Intel iMac running 10.6.4. I have tried the phoenix and imprudence viewers, and I get the same problem each time. At least that part is consistent.

What are the next goals?

Well, once we have something that functions much like the Windows USB counterpart, I will turn my attention to:

• Simple Startup and Shutdown
• Getting rid of excess files and directories
• Tuning of all config files
• Making use of the web server. Provide info on where to get viewers, a local wiki for the project, and be able to serve as a web gateway for objects in world that need it.
• Getting a good logo

Some more goals:

• Be completely self contained (not touch the local disk at all.. I do currently use a MySQL socket in the standard /tmp location)
• Allow for different mount points besides /Volumes/MacSimStick (am not sure if config files can take care of that for everything…)
• Make it easy to change ports and passwords

I think this is all doable. Although one part of me would love to hold off on snapshots until I have everything working end to end, it’s more important to know when to ask for help! That way, those of us on the Mac side can get going on this that much quicker.

Thanks for any help!

When I was starting to learn PHP and MySQL in 2001, I wanted to tackle a project that meant something to me; a non-trivial web application…

So, being a photographer and programmer with some time on my hands, I decided to write a photo database.

The first iteration of FlexiPhoto had a hard-wired interface.  I rewrote it to support multiple UIs and languages.  Sometime in 2004-2005, I rewrote it again as a PHP5 app.

In 2006, I got distracted by Second Life :)  It was like going down a rabbit hole.  I got good at scripting in LSL [1].  I shelved my web projects.  What a mistake!  Although I have learned a lot of web tech in the last 5 years, I had my attention split by learning a lot about Second Life.  It’s nice to be good at it, but it doesn’t pay!  And, damn, I could use some money about now …

So I am back on the case with FlexiPhoto.  I have a virtual Ubuntu machine running at Slicehost, which I’ll use for the public-facing Demo, Wiki, and Download site.  I’m in the midst of dusting off FP (switching database layer from DB to MDB2, for one thing), and expect to have it available within a week.  It’s going to look clunky and very pre-AJAX, but then, I am a big fan of iteration.

A fun side note about Linux and running virtual machines at home: I still have my old 1U rack server, which hosted FlexiPhoto and other sites back in the day.  The damn thing is loud! It’s running an old version of Debian.  My task today is to mirror my Slicehost OS at home.  I’ve installed Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) on my iMac, hosted via VirtualBox. That will give me synced development & public environments.  I also am able to dual boot my Samsung NC10 Netbook to Windows XP and Ubuntu.  I’ve got it covered, baby!

Geez, geeking out here big time.

Anyways, FlexiPhoto is a good portfolio piece of mine, and I am stoked to be working on it again.  It’s like an old friend :)

[1] …although, to this day, I really think Cory O should have finished LSL.  It even makes Tcl look good, and that’s saying a lot…

First off, Happy New Year!

I’ll be at Macworld SF next week, at least on Tuesday and another day. I don’t have a conference pass, so I’ll check out the exhibits and get to events to meet people. A couple of events are the TWiT broadcast, and Deb Shadovitz’s Party For The People. Those are on Tuesday. The Netter’s Dinner on Thursday looks like fun.

I’d enjoy meeting up with folks next week at MWSF, particularly if they’re into PHP/web-dev stuff, or photo databases, or splitting things up with Linux (what do you like to run on which platform, etc.) I’d also like to talk to folks that have had success with Ruby on Rails – I’ve read why’s (poignant) guide to ruby [1] and some other Ruby docs, and totally get it. Looks like an excellent thing to learn. If you know of a web-dev gig, check out my resume. If it seems like there could be a good fit, let’s meet up this week, or at MWSF.

[1] which is a bizarre bit of writing, sort of like Hunter Thompson writing a book about cooking. But there is good Ruby info in there.

I’ve been putting off the day of upgrading this server (daniel.org, flexiphoto.org) to PHP 5. In order to start demoing FlexiPhoto 2.5, I’m going to have to bite the upgrade bullet.

One thought is to get PHP5 to coexist with PHP4, and only make use of PHP5 for FlexiPhoto. I kinda don’t like this, as it just seems to put off the day of “doing it right”. WordPress and MediaWiki are supposed to run fine with PHP5, so it would seem that a well-planned “swap of mod_php” would be the way to go. We’ll see! (and of course, things are backed up first …)

If you see nothing more than a splash page sometime in the next few days (hopefully for a brief time), it’ll be due to the swaparoo.

A diagram of core web development interests, with a few comments …

(more…)

Nope, I haven’t forgotten to write. I actually have tons of stuff to write about.

I am pretty sure I will be going to O’Reilly OSCON 2005 in August. I’m getting myself set to end a long detour, and get back to the types/forms of software development that have an active community (AJAX, FAME, LAMP). Part of that involves reconnecting with the tech and the people.

I enjoyed Portland in 2003, so it’ll be fun to get back.

This is a quick followup to the post Commands, Scripting, and Wading Through 10,000 Files. I had mentioned that I like to keep a copy of a checksum file, but I didn’t show a script that really takes advantage of pairs of them. “comparesnaps.pl” allows you to see changes across the same set of files over time …

Without further ado, here is a link to comparesnaps.pl

I’ve been very impressed lately with what’s happening in the AJAX world. There are so many new pieces of tech out there that are just waiting to be assembled in exciting ways.

Check out an edit-in-place example. Sure the TiddlyWiki does this, but this is also showing all sorts of drag and drop functionality. I especially like the Slideshow Sorter. Also see Walter Zorn’s site

Then take a gander at HoverSmack, which is combining search requests with DIV generation

And then watch Sam Stephenson’s movie, where he goes through the process of converting a form to use AJAX (with Ruby on Rails) in just a few minutes …

Now imagine these elements coming together is more polished, fleshed out web apps …

Another thing I’ll check out soon (I need to be discplined, and get back to my real work, and my WP plugin) is Lickr, which accesses Flickr content in pure HTML and JavaScript.

A good place to find out what’s going on in this space is on del.icio.us