This is the comment thread for http://news.osgrid.org/2010/06/22/dead-region-cleanup/

-coyled

a good idea but I think some attention needs to be given to those people who run their sim from their own pc ( a lot I bet). To (possibly) have to find a new place each time that one boots the server is a REAL pain and discriminatory? Maybe its time to register a location for a home region ( maybe just one) in ones account that the cleanup process doesnt touch unless it hasnt been used in a month period say.

Mercalia Beck

The problem with that, as I mentioned in the article, is that tp's to down regions fail (obviously) and your neighboring sims will waste resources trying to communicate with your down region. Your down region negatively affects other users and region operators. If your concern is simply having to find open coordinates every time, then you could place your region(s) further out where there are no neighbors. Then it'd be less likely someone would take your spot. Some automated region launchers, e.g. Adam Frisby's Automated OSGrid Region Launcher [ http://www.adamfrisby.com/blog/2009/12/ ... -launcher/ ] will find open coordinates for you on startup.




We'd like to offer that eventually, but it's one of many things on the to-do list. No idea when it'll actually be in place.

-coyled

Great suggestion for those Part-Time OpenSimmers out there!

Alternatively, for those wishing to extend a bit more, A spare PC with a battery backup, always on, is basically a region server, regardless of whether its home or collocated.

The next step is a hosted region, and if one looks at Linden Lab fees in comparison, then the various OpenSim offers are great value.

I myself have a mid range PC running out of sight in my garage, a UPS and uptime is great. Load is not heavy but its solid as a rock.

I have been thinking of buy a hosting service for some time but many of the affordable ones that I can technically copy with dont allow so called Shell access for loading/saving oars - which I do a lot. Many hosters have said they will do that for me - but I treat oars like backing up a pc - often and when I having been trying out some thing that I think I may not be able to recover from easily.

I dont like the idea of keeping a pc running all the time - a) I dont have a spare one that has reasonable specs - and you do need a reasonable modern one, not for cpu power but for chipset/memory configuration - I found an old 2Gb VIA KT600/AMD XP2600+ system I had left over not really able to cope well and any way burns a lot of electricity due to its old technology b) cost of electricity.

The trouble with this is..it could be frustrating for visitors and new users to try to tp to non responding regions..and why this clean up is a good thing. If regions showed up as red and marked offline on the map it might be better?

Here's a list of current OpenSim hosting providers, and their starting prices:

http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/opensi ... providers/

(Let me know if I missed any!)

-- Maria Korolov
Editor, Hypergrid Business
maria@hypergridbusiness.com

Beautiful !
Nice work
TP will become a nice experience now
thx for work

I like the idea of the cleanup. My 64 regions all run on one machine, and it is up all the time, but the regions do crash, and I do not always notice when they do so. I've been looking into the automatic restart ideas, but I have too much to learn about linux before I will be able to impliment them. It is a small miracle I have it running on linux as it is.

Maybe we need some sort of agreement where regions which are intended to be up and online 24/7 are in a sector where the cleanup time is longer, and those which are test regions are in another sector where the cleanup is very short.

To have a cleanup is something that just needs to be part of the operations. I like to travel around sometimes and it is a real pain when so many places either do not allow access, or they are dead.

I like the color coding idea mentioned. Those regions that are not open should be shown in a different color than those which are open regions. How cool woud that be when you look at a map and would know if you can visit it or not before ever trying to tp. Maybe an idea that can be expanded upon in the "down the road" list of ideas.

Thanks for the great work on getting back to the regular cleanup. The one week idea is a good compromise I believe. If my regions are down that long, I guess I can scout out a new location if I loose the old one.

@ Slow Putzo You should check out http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Running (osWatchdog) which can be adapted just for a regular OpenSim Region Server.