Running SoaS on a Mac

[Dot Matrix]

Ener Hax's Sim-on-a-Stick has been a vital tool for OpenSim users and educators for years. However, out of the box, it is set up only for Windows-based PCs.

At the beginning of 2014, Greythane created a version for Mac users, based on his work on WhiteCore-Sim, a successor to the Aurora project. In the past, this Mac version of SoaS could be downloaded from the official SoaS site, but it is no longer available.

However, the installation tools used by WhiteCore are very similar to those in the Greythane SoaS package, so I wondered whether it might be possible to meld them together.

This thread will document the experiments, and perhaps help others to get SoaS working directly on their Macs without resorting to Bootcamp or Parallels.

[Dot Matrix]

Step 1: Downloading and installing WhiteCore-on-a-MacStick

First go to http://whitecore-sim.org/wiki/default/i ... -downloads

Download the standalone application, WhiteCore-on-a-MacStick, which is a standard Mac installer package called WhiteCoreInstaller. Right-click WhiteCore.mpkg and choose "Open". This will install WhiteCore.app in your Applications folder.

Open the Applications folder, then right-click WhiteCore.app and choose "Show Contents". Select the Resources folder, then copy and paste it somewhere easily accessible (e.g. the desktop). You might like to rename it "Sim-on-a-Mac", say (SoaMac henceforth).

Open SoaMac, and find the bin folder. Rename this bin-whitecore (or suchlike).

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Step 2: Downloading and installing Sim-on-a-Stick

Download the latest version of SoaS from http://simonastick.com/

Choose the Single Sim Zipped File.

Unzip it, then find the folder diva-r25084 > bin. Copy and paste this bin folder into the SoaMac folder.

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Step 3: Tweaking the configuration files

This is where the process gets a bit more technical.

Go to SoaMac > config > sim > Configuration > Data. Use TextEdit to open the file MySQL.ini. This file shows you the settings for the MySQL database set up for WhiteCore, which you're going to use instead for OpenSim. The line reads:

Code: Select all

ConnectionString = "Data Source=127.0.0.1;Port=3307;Database=whitecore;User ID=whitecore;Password=whitecorepass;"

Now go to SoaMac > bin > config-include, and open the file MyWorld.ini with TextEdit. Look for the section headed [DatabaseService], and the line:

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ConnectionString = "Data Source=localhost;Database=opensim;Port=3307;User ID=opensim;Password=opensimpass;Old Guids=true;Allow Zero Datetime=true;"

Change this line to the following:

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ConnectionString = "Data Source=localhost;Database=whitecore;Port=3307;User ID=whitecore;Password=whitecorepass;Old Guids=true;Allow Zero Datetime=true;"

Save the changed MyWorld.ini.

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Step 4: Tweaking Greythane's script for sim_console.command

In this step, you'll replace the current WhiteCore start-up script with the script Greythane originally created for Sim-on-a-Stick (January 2014).

Find the file sim_console.command in the SoaMac folder. Open it with TextEdit (not Terminal just yet!).

Find the lines that read:

Code: Select all

cd ./bin
echo Starting WhiteCore Standalone Simulator...
mono WhiteCore.exe -skipconfig
wait

exit

Replace them with the following (which I copied directly from my SoaS Mac installation downloaded from the Sim-on-a-Stick site before all the Mac versions disappeared):

Code: Select all

echo starting mariadb...
./startmariadb.sh
sleep 3

cd ./bin
echo Starting Sim-on-a-Mac...
mono OpenSim.exe 
wait

cd ../
echo stopping mariadb...
./stopmariadb.sh
exit

Save the file.

Then open it with Terminal...

Edited a line in the final code example from cd ../.. to cd ../ to correct an error in Terminal when closing down the sim.

[Dot Matrix]

The end result ...

[Marstol Nitely]

Thanks Dot! I'm going to share this with my Mac friends who have been wanting to use SOAS for a long time. I'm sure this will be helpful.

[Dot Matrix]

Having tried to follow these instructions to set up a fresh Mac, I've found a problem in that OpenSim.exe crashes soon after start up.

I suspect the culprit might be the version of Mono. On the older Mac where this DOES work, Mono is version 3.2.4 (so pretty old). On the new Mac, Mono is version 4.2.2.

Both Macs are running Yosemite 10.10.5.
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Edit: Hunting older versions of Mono to download is non-trivial it seems. A blog post Obtaining old Mono and MonoDevelop Mac versions by ohads led me here: http://download.mono-project.com/archive/

I'll experiment and see if anything works.

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Edit 2: Uninstalling Mono 4.2.2 and installing Mono 3.12.1 has worked.

[Dot Matrix]

This is an oldish thread, but I've been experimenting again along these lines, including searching out the original packages. I'm using a mid-2014 MacBook Pro running El Capitan (MacOS 10.11.6).

The original Mac SoaS package by Greythane is still available via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150213104 ... taller.dmg

The ancient mono package that works with it is available here:
http://download.mono-project.com/archiv ... in.x86.pkg

Note that this installs a fairly old version of OpenSim, version 0.7.6, which does not seem to support materials. However, you can upload OARs using the console in Terminal.

Wifi also works out of the box so you can edit accounts (default Wifi admin user: Wifi Admin; password: secret). In fact, not being able to get Wifi working on the newer versions is what motivated me to look for the original packages.