We often get asked about installing Opensim on a Mac, but unfortunately we have no idea as we are stuck on pc's. Luckily Mac Expert Dave Pentecost has the answers...
There are many tips to be found online about installing Opensim
on Mac OS X, but they are scattered and often confusing and out of
date. This tutorial will describe the simplest methods to
install a standalone Opensim region on your Intel Mac. In a later
tutorial I will show how to create a grid of multiple regions.
In this tutorial I will be using Mac OS 10.5.6, Opensim 0.6.4,
and Mono 2.4. As of this writing, these are the latest versions of
the software. One of the great advantages of installing the latest
Opensim release is that it supports save and load of OAR (Opensim
Archive) files. This allows you to back up your entire sim,
including terrain, all buildings and objects, and move it or
restore it on the same or another Opensim region. It also allows
you to load free sim configurations that others have provided, as
you will see below. I am providing my Maya sim as an OAR file in
the easy method download.
I will describe two methods of creating your very own standalone
opensim region ( or sim ).
1) The standard "geeky" approach,
using Terminal to download from SVN and build the application. I'll
include the exact commands, and only the commands that you need for
Intel Macs. If this sounds like the right approach for you then
look ahead to How-to install Opensim on Mac
OSX - The Geeky Way.
2) The easy shortcut, using a
prebuilt .dmg file which you can download from my site, drop into
your user folder, and configured the first time you run it. I'll
also include a tiny application (a shell script) that you can
double-click to start the Opensim server, rather than using
Terminal every time you start up. You will still use Terminal as
the Opensim console, which lets you run many useful commands on
your Opensim server, including load and save OAR files. Head over
to How-to install Opensim on Mac OSX
- The Easy Way if this sounds more like your
thing.
Note: The standalone methods in this
tutorial use the SQLite database that comes bundled with Opensim.
There is no need to install MySQL - that becomes necessary only if
you intend to run in grid mode, with multiple regions. You can
start running your local sim now following these instructions, and
back up your build with the save OAR command. That way, you can
restore it if you later decide to convert to grid mode.
COMING SOON: How to install a multi-region Opensim grid
on Mac OS X