Halcyon Bare Metal to Login Tutorial

The following tutorial will enable you to install all the components of a Halcyon Grid with a Web Management Interface. The process can be relatively complex and not taken lightly. However the goal of this tutorial is to make the process as straight forward and as painless as possible. Halcyon doucmentation has never been a strong point, we aim to fix that. There are several ways to install Halcyon and each has it's merits. We are going to focus on a single server installation with master-branch sources. This is not saying that the following process is the only accepted process, it aims to be the least complicated and quickest deployment for a small grid. By it's nature Halcyon, with a few configuration schemes, is very scalable. So this one server installation can be migrated to a larger platform to host medium, large or eventually massive grids.

The first step in the zero to hero setup is configuring the bare metal server. This can be a physical machine or a Virtual Machine on the VMware ESXi or VMWare Workstation/Player platform. These instructions can be modified to support other virtual platforms such as Hyper-V and VirtualBox. Those installs are beyond the scope of this tutorial and your mileage may vary.

For this setup we are going to install Microsft Windows Server 2019 in evaluation mode. The iso can easily be downloaded from the Microsoft Servers here.

This evaluation iso gives you 180days from install to test, deploy and evaluate your installation. If you are satisified with its performance and setup you can always convert to a paid license through wichever Licensing Outlet you desire.

Once downloaded you can use Rufus to create a bootable DVD or ThumbDrive. (Downloadable here) We'll be using a 16GB ThumbDrive for this installation. Choose your device on the first pulldown, Choose Disk or ISO Image from the second pulldown, then choose SELECT to browse to your download ISO file.

Once you choose your ISO, Rufus is ready to write to the ThumbDrive.

>

The default settings should suffice for image creation, tweak as you desire. Once all the settings are as you wish them, click on START to begin the write process.

Once you press START, you'll see the progress bar at the bottom begin to fill. The time this takes varies on the speed of your ThumbDrive, Disks and overall system.

The process took roughly 10 minutes over a network drive to a 16GB SanDisk Cruzer Glide USB Drive on an Intel i7 PC with 64GB RAM.

Once completed eject your ThumbDrive and load it into your bare metal server. Actual server specs can vary depending on your projected grid size and amount of users. I would suggest the following

• Dual Intel Xeon processor with 8 to 16 cores. A dual cpu setup will give you up to 32 processing cores to dedicate to your grid.
• 64GB to 128GB of system RAM, more is better of course.
• A 120GB or larger SSD for your System/OS drive
• A 120GB or larger SSD for your Grid Data Drive
• A 2TB to 5TB or larger depending on your projected growth for you Whip Asset Storage space.
  

Machines with similar specs can be found online from sites such as ebay or refurbished server outlets for a reasonable price.

Power on and let the system find the source files.

Besure to select Windows Server 2019 Standard (Desktop Experience)




Check "I Accept" then click Next



Choose Custom Install Windows Only (advanced)



Choose the first 120GB Drive and click New



Take the default settings and click Apply



Click OK



Once the partitions are created on the first drive click NExt. Don't worry about the other drives now, we'll configure them inside the OS.



Let Windows work, depending on your specs this can be a few minutes or a long wait.



When the file copy is complete you'll be ready for your first restart.

The machine will go through its paces and may reboot once or twice. Once the process is complete you'll be presented with a Password Creation Dialog. Choose an appropriately secure password and click Finish.



Now you're at the Lock Screen, Press Control - Alt - Delete to pring up the password prompt.



Once logged in you'll be presented with the desktop. First a couple of house keeping tasks to make our lives easier.

First we'll click on Local Server in the Server Manager.





Then on the right side middle click on IE Enhanced Security Configuration.



Choose the OFF radio button for Administrators then click OK.



When you are back to the Local Server, click on Computer Name to change the system name to something more appropriate and usable than the default generated name.

Click Change, then under Computer name enter in your desired system name. Here we chose halcyon-grid-1. Click OK Then OK again.





Once you click through the dialogs you'll be asked to restart the system in order to apply the new changes. Click Restart Now.



Let the system Restart. Once ready log back in. Right click on the desktop and choose Personalize.




Click on Themes, then Choose Desktop Icon Settings at the bottom.




Check all the boxes for Computer, User's Files, Network, Recycle Bin and Control Panel and click OK




The last step is a matter of personal preference. I found having those icons on the desktop makes for less menu browsing and puts what I need at easy reach.



Time to configure your Network. Right click on the Networking Icon in the system tray and choose
 Open Network & Internet Settings. In the dialog click on Change Adapter Options



Right click on your Ethernet Adapter (You are using a wired connection aren't you???) and choose properties. Choose Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click Properties. You can use DHCP is you have relative control of your IP address. Though I reccommend you use a Static IP. Click Use the following IP address and fill in your IP, NetMask and Default Gateway.

eg:  IP: 192.168.1.100
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Of course these values will be provied by your Hosting Provider. If you're running a development setup on your home network (not advised for production environments) these settings will be found in your Router's configuration.

Choose Use the following DNS server addresses. In the Preferred DNS Server enter 8.8.8.8 and in the Alternate DNS Server enter 8.8.6.6. These are a couple of the Google DNS servers and provide pretty quick and updated DNS resolving. You can of course use your Hosting Provider's DNS settings if you like.



Click OK and close all the dialogs. If all went well you should be connected to the Internet.

Right click the Windows Start Icon and choose Disk Management from the Menu. Right Click on Disk 1 and choose Online.



Right click on Disk 1 again and Choose Initialize Disk. Check Disk 1 and choose GPT (GUID Partition Table) then click OK.



If you have one installed click on the CD-ROM drive and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths. Click Change, then assign a new drive letter beyond you installed Hard Drives. eg: F if you have 3 HDD's.
Click on then Yes. The CD-ROM should now be remapped opening space for the HDD's



Right click on Disk 1's volume and choose New Simple Volume. Click Next


Choose the appropriate size for your drive, click Next


Choose Format this volume with the following settings, NTFS, Default and name it Grid-Data. Click Next.

Click on Finish and your drive will be ready for use as D:\ and named Grid-Data.



Repeat the above steps for Drive 2. Name it Whip Assets.

This should complete the OS Config.

The next set of apps are required for the successful compliling, installation and running of Halcyon.

Microsoft .Net 4.7.1 Targeting pack. This library is called by the Halcyon build solution. Without it, Halcyon will fail to build. Download, run and accept default settings.

Download MS NDP471-DevPack

Visual Studio Community 2017, it is important that you download VS 2017. VS 2019 does NOT allow Whip to compile correctly. Earlier versions may work, but have not been tested by me.

Download MS VS 2017

Run the install, when the Workloads panel opens up choose .NET desktop development, Desktop developmnet with C++, ASP.net and web development and Python development.



Next choose the Individual Components panel. In that look for and choose .NET Framework 4.7.1 targeting pack, Git for Windows and Visual C++ tools for CMake (if not already slected).



Once those are selected click install. sitback and wait. The process takes a few to complete. Now would be a good time to stretch and get the blood flowing.



Once complete, close Visual Studio then right click on the This PC icon, choose Properties, then Environment Variables at the bottom. Under System variables highlight Path and click Edit.



Click New, in the entry that appears paste the following. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\CMake\CMake\bin
Then click OK Through the 3 dialogs.


That should complete the MS VS 2017 install.

The next app is required to build the Whip Asset Server. Download and install Conan-Win-64.1.14.3 and install with defaults. Conan also changes the User Path adding C:\Program Files\Conan\conan

Download Conan

Make sure you download the Windows Installer Download x86_64.

We'll need a reboot for the changes in the path to take effect. You can Log Out Then Log In or reboot now.


MySQL Server for Windows. Last required app install before we get to downloading and building source files. Download MySQL from the Oracle site.

Download MySQL

Run the installer. It may tell you there is an Upgrade for the Installer, choose yes.




Accept the License, the choose Custom under Setup Type and click Next.



Under Select PRoducts and Features choose the following:

Click Next, then Execute



If you have any Error and Try Agains, Click Try Again untill all components say Complete.



Choose Standalone Server and click Next



Choose Server Computer from the Pulldown and keep the Defaults, click Next



Choose Legacy Authentication Method, Press Next



Enter in a good Root Password, then click Add User, create the user halcyon as DB Admin with host % and a strong password.
Click Next



Keep the defaults and click Next.



Now click Execute.



Finally click Finish



Click Next then Finish one more time.

MySQL Workbench will start automatically. Check your login to your MySQL Server. If you get an Unsupported Operating System message, you can dismiss it.

Final App Configuration, is a handy hack. For some reason Microsft has decided to remove the "Opem Command Window Here" option from the Context Menu.
This bit of code will restore it. Create a new text document somewhere safe, (eg: Documents or Download Folder). Place the following snippet in the file:

Name the file "return_cmd_prompt.reg"   Make sure you have Hide Extenstions for Known File Types, turned off.

Double click the newly named file. It will add a registry entry to return the cmd prompt.





Keep the file handy, Microsoft Update likes to undo the feature.

Now here is where we get into the nitty-gritty down and dirty.

The first program we will Compile is Whip. Back where you extracted the source files, Hold the shift key down and Right Click on the whip-server-master folder and
choose Open Command Window Here.

When the Command Window opens type in build.bat and press enter. If we've installed and configured everything correctly up to this point his process will take quite some time.



Once you hit enter you'll see a lot of activity. While it runs now is a good time for another stretch, walk the dog, grab a cuppa, kiss the wife/husband.



After an exhausting period:



If all went well and you're seeing the above window, we should now have a bin directory and in that directory are two files, whip.exe and whip.cfg.sample



Now we want to copy those two files to our Whip Assest drive which we setup as Drive E:/. On Drive E:/ create a directory Whip and into that directory copy the two files.



Rename whip.cfg.sample to whip.cfg and open it in Notepad++. You'll see the following:

Change the following lines:

password = "someting you decided on"

disk_storage_root=E:\Whip\assets

You'll also want to create the assets directory inside of the Whip Directory. Full path would be E:\Whip\assets This is important. If this is done improperly, Whip will not start.



Now that Whip is done we can move onto halcyon-setuptools. This next step is a bit trickier because we have to edit some files before compiling.

Change to the directory halcyon-setuptools-master/Source/hc-databse/sql



Right Click halcyon-core-base.sql and choose Edit with Notepad++

Scroll down until line 338. You should see the following:

You want to remove the comment markers so that you get:

Now we want to scroll down to line 661, you'll see

Change the 45 to a 256 so you get:

Save the file.

Next we want to Right Click halcyon-rdb-base.sql, choose Edit with Notepad++ and scroll down to line 214.

You want to verify that the line reads  `ServerFlags` int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',

If it does, then we are good to go.

Once those files are edited we are ready yo compile. Navigate back to the halcyon-setuptools-master directory. You'll see the file HalcyonSetuptools.sln.

Double click it and choose Visual Studio 2017.

Make sure you have the Soultion Explorer showing (View Menu/Soultion Explorer or Control-Alt-L). Click on the top of the solution (Soultion 'HalcyonSetuptools' 1 project)

Click on the Build Menu and choose Build Solution.

This process should be pretty quick. You get output like the following:



You'll now have a bin directory with several files in it. You'll see an sql directory, ensure that the halcyon-core-base.sql and the halcyon-rdb-base.sql files are in the sql directory.

You can double check these files for the edits we made above just to be on the safe side.

Now it's time to compile Halcyon itself. Hold the shift key down and Right Click on the halcyon-master directory and choose Open Command Window here. and type runprebuild.bat



You'll get this:



Now navigate into the halcyon-master directory and find Halcyon.sln. Double click it and open in Visual Studio 2017. Select the top of the soultion, select build solution from the build menu.

A sucessful build will produce:



Files were created in the bin folder. Select and copy the bin folder. Also Create the folders 9500 through 9509.

Navigate to the Grid-Data drive (D:\)  and create a directory D:/Grid. Paste the bin directory into this new folder. We'll come back to this folder later.



Enter the bin directory, Select all files and folders. Right Click on the selection and choose Copy.



Return to the main D:\Grid directory. Right Click on folder 9500 chose paste. This will move all the guts of the Region server to the working directory.
Repeat this step for each of the region directories.

So far everything done has been the easy part. This is where we get complicated and in depth. We've compiled our sources, moved our initial directory onto the Grid Drive.
Now we have to create the INI files, shortcuts, batch files and directory structure to support the grid.

NOTE: A lot of the following is credited to Vinhold Starbrook (Bob Curtice). He came up with the directory and files structure that makes it possible to mangae most of the
Halcyon Grid from the MyWorld WebSite source. He has done a massive amount of work that has made getting a working, scalable grid off the ground.

Grid services and Regions are set up to use Region folders for the regions and each region gets its startup info from the grid website.
That is identified in the Region.ini override for Halcyon.ini located in the D:\Grid folder.
Region folder layout:

D:\Grid\
D:\Grid\bin - for Aperture for now. May become code source for all regions.
D:\Grid\9500 - For region specific data controls. Also has all the code placed there for now.
D:\Grid\9501
D:\Grid\9502
And so on up to 10 regions.

Using the port numbers assigned to each region is done so the ports used can be easily seen and they dont change when regions get renamed or relocated in the grid.

Region port numbers start at 9500 but must be unique port numbers even when on different physical/virtual servers if the regions can be seen from a viewer or it causes the regions to blank out randomly.
Each Windows region server must have the firewall opened for the actual ports used. eg: 9500-9509

The starting template config files needed for each grid are listed below. Some will be placed in the GridHost folder and most used in the Grid Services installation.
Halcyon.ini is to be placed in the region server D:\Grid folder and the grid services location folder.
The Region.ini is the template for each region to be set up, placed in its folder named by port number.
Aperture.cfg is placed in each Region server in D:/Grid/bin folder.

 Replacement tags and files they are in:

This should give you an idea of how to layout your Directories and files.



The following files need to be created and placed in their respective locations.

Create a text file iin the D:\Grid directory and name it acl.cmd

Paste the following into the file:

Save the file, Right Click on it and choose Run As Administrator. This file will create the Access Control Lists that will allow the grid services to be run under
Windows without elevated privileges.

Next up is opening Incoming ports in the Windows Firewall.

To set these port openings up, Right Click on the Network Icon in the System Tray. Choose Open Network & Internet Settings. On the settings page click on Windows Firewall.



Next click on Advanced Settings



Then click on Inbound Rules



Click on New Rule



Choose Port then click Next



Choose TCP and Specific Local Ports, enter 8000,9500-9509




Choose allow the Connection



Check Private and Public



Name the Rule and optionally give a description




Click Finish. Repeat the process for the rest of the ports from the chart above.

Create the Halcyon.ini file.

Copy the Halcyon.ini file into D:\Grid and into D:\Grid\bin

Create the Region.ini files.

Replace world.mydomain.com with your Grid domain and 192.168.1.100 with your server's internal IP.

Change the port numbers to correspond with the directory name the file is being placed into.
eg: 9500 for directory 9500
     9501 for directory 9501
     etc...

Copy a Region.ini into each of the Region directories. Making sure you've edited the file to correspond to the directory you're copying it into.

Create aperture.cfg

Place a copy into each of the region directories and into the bin directory.

Configure Grid Services XML config files:

UserServer_Config.xml

GridServer_Config.xml

MessagingServer_Config.xml

trustednetworks.txt - This file is used by the grid services and the region instances to identify who they may accept information from.
<yourIPPattern> = your IP address first three sets. ie. 255.255.231. The 10.0. is to identify the internal network IP pattern.

defaultlogins.txt - used by grid services to set default login landing spots if it exists. Set to regionname for the landing points to be used

defaultregions.txt - This defines where someone without a home will land on logon

Place each of these files into the D:\Grid\bin directory.

Grid Services and Region Startup files

Halcyon.bat - File used with Shortcuts to start each region

Shortcut files - Standard Windows shortcuts configured to start each region with required parameters

Place these shortcuts in D:\Grid\Shortcuts

Grid Services shortcuts One each for Whip, User, Grid, Messaging and Aperture Servers.

One-Shot Grid Start batch file - REM out Regions that won't be started until needed.

Place these files in D:\Grid - Each Grid Service can be called via the icon or the entire grid and regions can be started with a single Double-Click using Start-Grid.bat

Now we'll get our website source files. The web interface is an actively developed Management Portal for the Halcyon Software developed and written by Vinhold Starbrook (Bob Curtice) of the Discover Creo Mundos Grid. Being that this is an actively developed set of files be aware that some errors may exist as the source is developed, features added and the code evolves. Open a Borswer and navigate to the My World Website Toolkit. Read thhrough the site and eventually get down to the Download Links.



What we're mainly here for are the links at the bottom. We want the first two links at this time, MyWorldDocs and MyWorldWebsite. Save each package to your local machine.



Once you have the files on your machine right click on the zips and choose Unblock. Then extract them to a working directory.

Navigate into the MyWorldWebsiteV0.9.4 directory. We are going to use Notepad++ to personalize a few items in the pages to your Grid.



Open Notepad++, choose Search / Find in Files. We're going to use search and replace to replace the default settings to your grid settings.




The first thing we want to Search and Replace is the http://MyWorld.com references. In the Find What box enter http://MyWorld.com

In the Replace with box enter your website url. eg: http://world.mydomain.com

Then click replace in files. A confirmation dialog will appear. choose OK



If there were any matches they'll now be overwritten with your URL.

NOTE: As of this writing the code has evolved that this step should no longer be necessary.

Next we'll search for instances of "My World" in order to personalize the site to your grid. Enter in your Grid Name and press Replace in files.
Confirm the operation by pressing OK



Once run you'll see the number of replacements in Blue.



Next we'll search for the default admin email. You can choose to keep director@ if you have that entity in your mail server.
Otherwise replace director@ with your admin entity. In this case we'll choose to replace director@ with admin@. Press
replace in files, then confirm the operation by pressing OK.



When it's done you'll see the number of replacements in blue.



NOTE: The website has four email addresses defined, the first three need to be set up in your email server - director, mailer, support and autoresponse.
Autoresponse is not intended to be responded to, but may be set up with a redirect to capture any mistaken responses. Set up your email server
with the appropriate addresses or replace the entries in the website with your email entities.

Replace the /Images/Site/Header.jpg with your own graphic, if you intend to use one. May require change in the /Styles/Site.css for the entry. Graphic is commented out by default.

Viewer splash page uses the /Images/Site/Backgrounds/*.png as the background images to show if there are any. You may place as many images here as you like, they will be
randomly displayed on the viewer page for your world. Create your site favicon.ico see https://www.w3.org/2005/10/howto-favicon for more information.

Update the Web.Config file connection strings to the grid and website DB connections. The two connections are for MyData - The grid database, and MySite - the Website
database. Keep the name handles the same and only change the actual database names if they are intentionally different. Otherwise you will have to also change every instance
of "MyData" and "MySite" in every page in the site and the Template pages for Visual Studio. Also change the User ID and password in the connection strings in Web.Config.

This step can be tricky. Vinhold's development environment variables can be different than the variables of our configured server. These can be a few gotchas that will keep
your site from working properly.

Open Web.Config and search for the following line <add assembly="MySql.Data, Version=6.10.6.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=C5687FC88969C44D"/>

You'll want to replace the version of the MySql.Data with the version of what is currently installed on your server. In our case it is Version 8.0.16.0. to find out which version of the
connector you are running navigate to C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0, holding the shift key Right Click on bin and choose Open Command Window here.

In the command window type mysql --version

You'll see the Version after Ver. In our case it was 8.0.16.0



Make the change in your Web.Config



One thing that will help us in troubleshooting errors is placing <httpErrors errorMode="Detailed" /> in your Web.Config.

This is placed near the bottom on the line above </system.webserver>



Next we'll set the connection strings for our databases.

Replace the Data Source with your configured IP, Database with the name of your database, User ID with your database user id and password with your database password.



To make our lives easier we'll add the URL Rewrite no in Web.Config. This will allow the Viewer hard coded landtool.php to find our landtool.apsx to make land sales possible in world.

Place the following just above </system.webserver>

Save your Web.Config file.

Now it's time to move the files over to the IIS directory. Navigate to your working directory, select all files by pressing Control-A, Right click on the
selection and choose Copy.



Now navigate to your Website directory and chose paste.




Just a few more steps to go before we can navigate to our site.

Navigate to the wwwroot directory of you IIS server Right Click on your website's directory and choose Properties.

On the Security tab find IIS_IUSRS in the Group or user names box.

Highlight it, then click edit.



Highlight IIS_IUSRS in the Groups or user name box, then check Allow for Full Control. Click OK. Then Click OK again.




This will give the IIS user account full control to the website directory. Need in order to manage files such as logs and FirstConfig files.

Before we can Use our Website we need to create the MySite database. In the MyWorldDocs zip you find a MySiteV0.94.sql file.

Open the file in Notepad++, select all the text using Control-A then copy it using Control-C.

Open MySQL Workbench, connect to your database server. In the Query Tab Paste the text from the SQL file.

select all the text again with Control-A then press the first Lighting Bolt.


You'll see the database and tables created in the Output Pane at the bottom. Click on the Schemas Pane and hit refresh. You should now see your mysite database.



NOW we are ready to browse our website. If all went well, you should be able to browse to your website url.


Now we can setup our initial Grid System account, Grid Owner, Grid Library and World Bank.

Click on New Account, a registration page will open up. Select a Gender, enter Grid as the First Name, Owner as the second name.
Create a Password and enter and administration email for the user. Click Register.



Do this again for the other accounts, Grid Library and World Bank.

Finally create an account for yourself.

The following gotcha has ben fixed as of 4/29/2019 with an entry in FirstConfig.txt

One gotcha I've run into is when you try to log into the Website with the new created accounts. When you click on Account Logon you get presented with the following error.

Control value for 'Email Domain Name' (EmailDomain) was not defined!

This can easily be corrected by opening MySQL Workbench and manually creating the entry in the Database.

BE VERY CAREFUL. MISTAKES EDITING CAN BREAK YOUR WEBSITE OR GRID. DIRECT DATABASE EDITING SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN LIGHTLY

Open MySQL Workbench, connect to your server then in the schemas pane expand the mysite database. You're looking for the control table.

Hover over the control table, you'll see icons appear, click the last one (looks like a pen and table). This will open the table for editing.




Scroll to the bottom of the Table where it say null. Enter the following: In the first column enter ADMINSYSTEM. In the second column, enter Email Domain Name. In the third column enter EmailDomain
In the fourth column enter your email domain name. eg: mydomain.com



Click Apply to register the changes.



Click Apply

If all went well the SQL entry will succeed.



Click Finish. Close MySQL Workbench

You can now go back to your browser and Click Account Logon. You'll be presented with a login page.


Enter in your Grid Owner credentials. Now we have to do some Grid Settings setup to get the site working fully and prepared for the actual grid startup.
Once logged in you'll se a menu entry for Website Administration. click it.


Now you'll have more menu options to chose from as the main administrator of your grid.



The first one we're interested in is Control List Management. Click it.

You'll see these entries:



Click on Member List for Grid System Accounts. You'll get:



Click on New Member.



In the Member Name box enter World Bank Account In the Key or List Link enter WorldBank (no space). In the Text Value box enter World Bank (with a space).

Click Add.



Click on Parent Level. Then click on Member List for Grid Region Defaults.



Now Click on Home Region



In Home Region in the Text Value box enter the name of your Home Region. eg: The Landings Then Click Update. Then click Control List Select.


Click on Welcome Region




Inside Welcome Region in the Text Value Box enter the name of your Welcome Region. (It can be the same as your Home Region).
Click Update, then Control List Select.



Click Parent Level



Click on Member List for Email Addresses



Click on Grid Owner Email



In the Grid Owner Email dialog in the Text Value box enter your administration email address. eg: admin@mydomain.com

Click Update, The Control List Select.



Click on Webmaster Email



In the Webmaster Email dialog in the Text Value box enter the email for your webmaster. eg: webmaster@mydomain.com

Click Update then Control List Select



Click Parent Level



Click Member List for Grid Settings



Click Grid Status URL



Inside the Grid Status URL dialog in the Text Value box replace myworldIP with the IP of your main Region Server. In this case it would be the local machine's IP.

Click Update the Control List Select


Click Parent Level



Click Website Administration 



Click Control Value Management



Click SMTP Sever


In the SMTP Server dialog in the Value Assigned box enter your smtp server. eg:smtp.mydomain.com Then click Update then Control Values Select.


Click MyData Database Name



In the MyData Database Name dialog in the Value Assigned box enter the name of your GRID database. In our case it's halcyon.
Click Update then Control Values Select.


Click on Server Location



In the Server Location dialog in the Value Assigned box enter Live. This puts the website in to Live mode enabling SSL.
Click Update then Control Values Select.


Click Website Administration


Click Grid Manager


Click Server Management



Click New Server


In the Server dialog enter in the details for your Server. The entries are relatively self explanatory. Click Add



You should now see your new server in the list. Click Website Administration


Click Estate Management


Click New Estate



In the New Estate Dialog name your first Estate. These are the Hierarchal containers for your Regions. Click Add
 


You should now see your first Estate. Click on your Estate.



Click New Region



In the New Region Dialog enter the Region Name, Map Location, Choose the Owner, Region Type and Prim Capacity. It is a good idea to start with your
Home Region and place it at grid center at 1000,1000. You can then build the rest of your grid from there.

Click Add


You should now see your first region inside of your first estate.



NOTE: This is where I found another gotcha. We've created the region, however I see no way to add it to a server or properly set the port.
I'm discussing this issue with Vinhold, however I don't think I'm communicating the error correctly. We hope to have a solution soon. In the
Meantime we have to add that info to the Database manually.

BE VERY CAREFUL. MISTAKES EDITING CAN BREAK YOUR WEBSITE OR GRID. DIRECT DATABASE EDITING SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN LIGHTLY

Open MySQL Workbench, connect to your server then in the schemas pane expand the mysite database. You're looking for the control table.

Hover over the regionxml table, you'll see icons appear, click the last one (looks like a pen and table). This will open the table for editing.
In the first entry goto the internalIP column. Enter the the internal network IP of your server, eg: 192.168.1.121. Next column enter the Port number, since this
is our first region on the server we'll assign it 9500. Next column, enter the externalIP of your server. This is the world reachable IP of your server. eg:173.208.213.12.
Click Apply.  BE VERY CAREFUL IN THIS TABLE. IT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO SERIOUSLY BREAK YOUR GRID.



Click Apply again



Click Finish.



Now you can go back to the website and see the region in Grid Manager with the assigned port.



At this point we can actually move on to actually starting our grid or we can enter more regions. To add more regions just repeat the last five
steps or so (From New Region under Estate Management).

Like I said, this is the major gotcha that I've found. I try to get a resolution to it soon and post the updated steps. For now this is what we have to do.

Now for the fun part and starting to see fruits of our labor up to this point.

Open up your Grid-Data drive eg: D:\Grid

In that directory we've placed several files and shortcuts that will enable us to run our grid with a few mouse clicks.

This is what you should have after following the earlier steps in this tutorial



At this point, theoretically we can just double click Start Grid.bat, sit back and watch it all start up. HOWEVER, nothing works perfectly
on the first try. To ensure we have a righteous Grid Startup will take a couple of steps to make sure our INI files and RegionXML database
calls are working the way they should.

Goto region directory 9500. In that directory look for the Region.ini file. Open it in Notepad++.

You're looking for the line http://world.mydomain.com/Regxml.aspx?Region=192.168.1.121&Port=9500

Copy the line into the address bar of your browser and hit enter. You won't necessarily see anything but a brief flash.

Now navigate to your website directory, C:\inetpub\wwwroot\world.mydomain.com in our case. Look for the file
RegXML.log Open it with Notepad++. You should see something similar to this:

If that's similar to what you have then you should be Go For Launch.

IF you get an error when pasting the Regxml call then something is misconfigured. Most likely your domain name or internalIP.

OR if you see something similar to this in RegXML.log

You'll notice the lack of region details. Again this is most likely caused by a misconfiguration of your domain name or internalIP inside your Region.ini.

Look for typos, ensure you have a valid IP address, make sure your domain is reachable via DNS.

Now assuming all is well, we can actually start the Grid!  Woohooo!!

Now back to the D:\Grid directory. You have two choices here. You can go for broke and Double Click Start Grid.bat, cross you fingers and
pray for success or you can start each piece Individually looking for errors. This perhaps is the smartest thing to do.

You'll want to start each file in the following order, allowing about 30 seconds between each to look for and troubleshoot errors.

We'll go for broke and run Start Grid.bat (Yeah we like living on the edge)

If all went well you had no errors no port blocking by the firewall no NAT issues if you're running behind a home router then
you should see a train wreck of windows on your desktop with your regions at a Region Name prompt. (eg: Region (The Landings) # _ )



Now we can dust off our viewer and attempt log in.

We'll use Firestorm for OS as our viewer. Start the viewer, open preferences (Control-P) under the Opensim tab we'll enter in our grid details.



Type in your region URL, in our case http://world.mydomain.com:8002 and click apply.

You should get an entry for your grid in the list, scroll to it and see if the Grid Details is populated. You should also see a splash screen.



Type in your Grid Owner credentials or if you created your own avatar account, your avatar's credentials. Press Log In



Barring anything horrific, bad DNS, typo's in passwords, firewall blocking ports, etc you should be able to make your first connection to your grid.



Now you'll notice that you're a cloud and there was an error about a missing outfit. This is to be expected at this stage. You'll need to create default avatars
for your grid. This process is beyond the scope of this particular tutorial. We do hope to have one detailing creating default avatars for your grid soon.

If you log back into your Website with your Grid Owner account, choose Website Administration then the Grid Manager you should see your region(s) running
with details and a user count.