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Finding a router that satisfies OpenSim’s requrement for NAT loopbacking the UDP protocol, or hairpinning, is really challenging and is one of the most asked technical questions in OpenSim related forums. 

After a good search we landed on the Ubiquity Network’s EdgeRouter X which is both cheap and capable. It runs Ubiquity’s EdgeOS operating system and is the smalest of a series of routers that can satisfy up to very demanding routing requirments.  Even as the most basic member of the family it can be managed by UNMS™ (Ubiquiti® Network Management System), a comprehensive controller also available on iOS and Android devices.

Setting it up for OpenSim after initial configuration basically means mapping ports to hosts in the Port Forwarding tab of the Firewall/NAT tab of the Edgerouter management screen.  You also need to enable hairpin NAT in the same tab. 

As mentioned above it will loopback UDP ports, while many routers only will loopback TCP. This is even true for otherwise sophisticated and expensive Cisco business routers. 

To make everything work you may also have to do some DNS trickery if you run your own DNS behind the firewall of the router, but that is the topic for another discussion. 

One hint here is for the InternalAddress of Regions.ini to use the internal numeric IP address of the server  the region is running on, while the field ExternalHostName shall use the fully qualified domain name (and not the IP address) of the server as seen from outside the Router / NAT. Seen from the inside this fully qualified domain name must resolve to the official IP address of the Router.  To make that work you can use a record in the hosts file or a record in DNS that points to the external IP address. 

The default configuration of this router will support UDP NAT routing of about 280 Mbits/sec. By enabling hardware offloading for NAT in the router the performance increase to around 930 Mbit/sec. The drawback is that you lose the ability to set up QoS policies.  Most small grids should not have a need for this anyway, but could be required for a larger installation with many active voice users. In that case one of the other models in the Edgerouter series would be a better choice. 

You should be able to find the EdgeRouter X for around $60 or equivalent in a local store or on the net. 

For many macOS users BBEdit is the editor of choice, and while there was a language module for the Linden Scripting Language (LSL) available, it had not been updated for a long time.  Download an updated version, where all the additions to LSL through November 2016 have been added. 

In addition all OSSL keywords and constants have been added.

The plist needs to be installed in ~Library/Application Support/BBEdit/Language Modules, and a restart of BBEdit will pick it up. 

BBEdit has been around like “forever” and was first launched April 12, 1992 on Macintosh System Software 6. 

LSL is used for scripting virtual worlds in SecondLife and OpenSim grids. 

The language module can also be used with TextWrangler. 

Kokua version 4.0.2 is available for download with support for Linux 32 and 64 bit, OS X and Windows. 

This version brings functionality up to par with the Linden 4.0.2 version of the SecondLife viewer were this is a maintenance release with focus on fixing issues and bugs for mesh uploads, playing sounds at region crossings in addition to a number of smaller issues.  

The release has the following additions for this version:

• RLV version 2.9.16.1 from Marine Kelly

• Added a preference to Enable RLV at Preferences->Kokua

• Added a menu and preference to disable jumping with the keyboard

• Fixed an issue where alt clicking on the avatar an moving the mouse would move or swing the camera a considerable distance. 

• Fixed a crash in the OS X version when receiving a teleport invitation on OpenSim 

• Corrected an issue with placing items of VAR regions on OpenSim

• Set the default hand pose to Relaxed when uploading an animation

Check the Kokua Blog for the full announcement and the change log.

Mac users need to be aware of a security issue with the Sparkle open source updater that is used by many Mac applications for providing updates to newer versions. 

The issue can used for a main-in-the-middle attack when downloading and installing new updates. 

Of the commonly used applications using Sparkle are Teamviewer and the VLC Media Player

Along with a flawed Sparkle version, vulnerable apps must also be running an unencrypted HTTP channel to receive software updates from offsite servers. Nefarious users capable of capturing network traffic, perhaps over an unsecured Wi-Fi connection, can leverage the Sparkle exploit to run malicious code remotely on a target computer. The publication cited work from a software engineer called Radek, who confirmed the exploit affects apps running on the latest versions of OS X 10.11 El Capitan and OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

A list has been made on Github where individuals identify applications that are found to be vulnerable. You may want to check the list and look for an update if you use one of the identified applications and versions.

OpenSim has functions to generate dynamic textures, including text, but what fonts can it use?

For OpenSim on OS X (Server) it turns out that all fonts installed in /Library/System/Fonts in addition to fonts installed in ~/Library/Fonts for the user that OpenSim is running under is available to mono and therefore to OpenSim. 

A discussion on how to make fonts available for OpenSim running on Linux and Windows can be found in the Kitely Blog, where they also provide a script for testing the fonts available. 

A modified script that includes some of the Apple installed fonts is below. Place the script in a prim and scale it so the texture with the fonts becomes readable. Fonts existing on the system will show properly formatted, the rest will be set in the same type.