The OpenUru team thought it would be a good idea to have a separate thread for updates on the status of their shard and I volunteered to maintain it.

History
Dec 3, 2011: Rarified and the OpenUru team announce plans to create a MOSS shard for the purpose of testing “pending changes that are eligible for submission to Cyan for inclusion in the official game.”
Dec 12, 2011: Rarified announces the opening of the OpenUru test shard (named "Minkata" for its use as a big sandbox) and begins initial testing with a limited number of participants.
Dec 21, 2011: The OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard opens to the general community for beta testing.
Jan 26, 2012: OpenUru.org notified Cyan that the next open source update (which includes several bug fixes tested on the Minkata shard) is ready to be included in MOULA.
Feb 13, 2012: CyanWorlds releases Build 905 with a big thank you to the Minkata Test Shard for assistance.
Feb 18, 2012: A Stress Test is held on the Minkata shard. Everyone has a good time and lots of useful information is provided to the shard operator.
May 11, 2012: Minkata shard is updated with a batch of bug fixes which need testing before the May 21st deadline (after which Cyan will pull the next update from OpenUru.org for inclusion in MOULa).
Oct 13, 2012: Minkata shard receives a significant update which includes fixes to avatar physics. Thorough testing of these changes is needed to be complete by Saturday, October 27th.

Current Status
Minkata Shard is
Current game build: 10/13/2012 - UruLive 1.912 - Minkata.65 - see Minkata Test Shard forum section for more information.

Anyone and everyone is invited to access the OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard to assist in testing bug fixes and new features destined to be submitted to Cyan for proposed inclusion in MOULA. New testers are encouraged to read the Minkata Shard Testers Guide (in laymen's terms).

Please see Rarified's post on How to Sign Up and Access the Shard and Mac_Fife's post on How to Submit a Bug Report.

Before getting started, please register to the forums and subscribe to the PING thread so you can receive e-mail notifications of updates to the shard which may affect your testing.

For more information in general and on getting started, please see Frequently Asked Questions below.

Also of note at this time, JWPlatt is seeking assistance with the JIRA/Helpdesk systems. Volunteers are needed to review bug reports and feature requests from this basic ticket system, then consolidate support requests into unique issues and enter them into the OpenUru JIRA tracking system on Foundry.

Whether you're participating or not, you can watch developments by checking the OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard forum section or following this thread in the News & Announcements.

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OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard is
OU-Minkata Shard Testers Guide (in laymen's terms)

Last edited by Tai'lahr on Sun Oct 14, 2012 1:46 pm; edited 7 times in total

Frequently Asked Questions

GENERAL

Everything I've heard about "shards" is that they're illegal and not allowed by Cyan. Why is this one okay?
This shard utilizes the CyanWorlds.com Engine (CWE) and MOSS server, both products of open source through a cooperative effort between Cyan and community members. For more information, see Open Source - CWE and MOSS in layman's terms and CyanWorlds.com Engine/FAQ.

What's the purpose of this shard?
To provide a place for testing bug fixes and new feature (and hopefully in the future, new content) contributions to open source Uru projects which are destined to be submitted to Cyan for proposed inclusion in MOULa.

Are there any new features on the shard that aren't on MOULa?
Not yet, but keep watching this thread…


GETTING STARTED

Is registration to the OpenUru.org forum required to participate?
Participants are highly encouraged register to the forums and subscribe to the PING thread so you can receive e-mail notifications of updates to the shard which may affect your testing.

I signed up for the shard, but haven't received a confirmation e-mail, yet. How long does it take?
The email response should be almost immediate. First, check your spam folder to see if it landed there. If not, then try again or PM rarified through the OU forum and tell him what e-mail address you used.

What are the system requirements for the OU Minkata shard?
Same as Cyan's MOULa, but you may need to update DirectX.

What do I do if I encounter a problem with launching the game?
Since the Minkata shard is very much like MOULa, you can start by checking the Common Problems and How To Solve Them thread here in the Technical Section of these forums. If it's not addressed there, then check the OU support Knowledge base to see if it's a known issue. You can also check the discussion thread in the Minkata test shard section at the OU forums to see if it's been addressed there.

Common issues specific to the shard include:

Error Message wrote:

UruExplorer.exe - Unable To Locate Component
This application has failed to start because d3dx9_27.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.

You need to update your DirectX - even if your current version works fine with MOULa, the updated version is required for the OU Minkata shard. See here for more details and a download link in the OpenUru Knowledgebase.

Error Message wrote:

File not found on server: Data\dat\BahroCave_District_YeeshaCave.prp.gz

and / or

Error Message wrote:

The application or DLL C:\Progarm Files\Uru Live Minkata\MSVCR71.dll is not a valid Windows image. Please check against your installation diskette.

This indicates that your MOULa files weren't properly copied over to the OpenUru-Minkata shard folder. You can try deleting and re-copying the files, but it's possible that the MOULa files are corrupted and you'll need to refresh those by launching MOULa before making new copies for the OpenUru-Minkata shard folder. See here for more details in the OpenUru Knowledgebase.

The launcher appears to have stopped.
The Minkata launcher will take longer to get started than MOULa because it's comparing some files that the MOULa launcher doesn't. However, the server or network may be down and it will take several minutes for the game to "time out." (You can find the online status on the OU Foundry home page or at the top of any page in Hesk .) Lastly, there may be a lingering game launcher program still running on your computer. See Patcher Problems ("I'm stuck at "Initializing Patcher..." ) in the Common Problems and How To Solve Them thread here.

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OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard is
OU-Minkata Shard Testers Guide (in laymen's terms)

Last edited by Tai'lahr on Mon Jan 02, 2012 1:15 pm; edited 7 times in total

Leonardo wrote:

Greetings Explorers!!
GoMe has some exciting news coming from the OpenUru team! [clicky]

Quote:

As they already told us during the All Guilds Meeting, the OpenUru.org team has been working on opening a new Uru Shard for testing new features.
Today, we announce that the preliminary work has finished and the shard is up and running! Right now, they are accepting only a restricted group of Testers and no new features have been installed yet, in order to make sure the structure is stable enough for testing. If it behaves correctly for a few days, the shard will open to a larger number of volunteers and new features will be added to be tested, such as the Unicode KI message support.
Stay tuned for more news on the OpenUru shard!

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OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard is
OU-Minkata Shard Testers Guide (in laymen's terms)

Last edited by Tai'lahr on Thu Dec 22, 2011 10:55 pm; edited 1 time in total

Leonardo wrote:

New announcement for OpenUru!

Quote:

OpenUru is finally ready to open their shard for testing and, like a big sandbox, they called it Minkata!
The shard ready to be visited by the public, rarified has been able to fix all the initial bugs it had and now it should work like the MOULa Server. For now it doesn't contain any new features, since Christmas is approaching and everyone is organizing for that; probably the Unicode Support feature will come after Christmas.
For now you can signup, download, and run around in Uru by visiting the OpenUru.org Foundry and following the Create Account link in the OpenUru.org Minkata Testing Shard section. There you will find a form to fill for creating an account on Minkata. Once you have verified your email address you will be given a link and all the instructions to download and make the Minkata Shard installation working.
If you find any problem or bug in Minkata that you want to report (remember, this is a testing shard it's there for testing and reporting bugs!) you can use the usual bugtracker system of OpenUru's Foundry JIRA or, if JIRA is too complicated for you, they have set up an easier HelpDesk tool. Before you try to submit any bug report, make sure you have read this quick How To.
The OpenUru Team also needs help from some voluteeres willing to do some manual work of putting bug reports in categories and put the bug submitted on the Help Desk into JIRA. This is very important for keeping everything synchronized on the big system that is the OpenUru Foundry. If you are interested in this, please read this thread: http://forums.openuru.org/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=668
Probably Uru on Minkata will be a bit slower on your computers because the Minkata Client has a lot of debugging options enabled, and they take time while the game is running.
We hope you can help OpenUru making Uru better and better with the new features!

http://www.guildofmessengers.com/content/minkata-new-shard-openuru-open

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OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard is
OU-Minkata Shard Testers Guide (in laymen's terms)

IM still waiting for the email that says account created and link to download

Ural, you might want to send a PM to rarified here and include your e-mail address so he can look into it. Maybe there was a typo.

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OpenUru.org Minkata Test Shard is
OU-Minkata Shard Testers Guide (in laymen's terms)

Great news! I signed up and the install was uneventful.

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"From the end of the world to your town" - Bernie Taupin


KI # 00083782

ural wrote:

IM still waiting for the email that says account created and link to download

The email response should be almost immediate. Please either try again, or PM me with the email address you used; I was unable to find an address in the logs with 'ural' as part of the address.

Thanks
_R

ural did you check your spam folder, as that is where my response came in

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John 14:6 KJV

I have been testing the Minkata shard. Setup went without a hitch.

However, when I try to click the "How To" link ( http://forums.openuru.org/viewtopic.php?p=5104#p5104 ) to read about how to post a ticket, I get the following error:

General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]

Access denied for user 'openuruo_pbb01'@'localhost' (using password: YES) [1045]

An sql error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact an administrator if this problem persists.

I get the same error if I go to OpenUru and Communities and then try to click on the Forum button.

ALSO, when I go to the Help Desk and click "Submit a Ticket", I get a form that requires me to fill in about 10 fields of info. I don't suppose there is a way to login so that it knows most of that info already (like name, email, OS, computer details)? Filling in the 10 fields will get old very fast.

Cheers,

Dadguy

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Member of the Guild of Greeters

You ran into a temporary interruption in service. It's back and the link works. Such interruptions are infrequent and don't usually last very long.

The support software we use is very simple and meant to make tickets as accessible to the public as possible. No registration required - required registration is often a complaint. It currently supports accounts only for administrators. Administrators include people who handle tickets. We are looking for volunteers to handle tickets. If your browser saves field information, it's possible it will give you a dropdown list of previous values to fill in the field for you when you begin typing.

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OpenUru.org: An Uru Project Resource Site : Twitter : Perfect Speed Is Being There.

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Mac - MOULagain KI#00004826
In the interests of the environment, this post has been constructed entirely from recycled electrons.

I signed up and installed without any hitches at all on my PC. It all seems to work perfectly. Well done!

Might try and do an install on my Mac later using WINE. Has anyone tried this yet?

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Dnidaz KI 517391
MOUL is

Also installs and runs fine under WINE on an intel Mac

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Dnidaz KI 517391
MOUL is

I'm trying to do the install here with WINE on an Intel iMac… I'm to the point of running UruLauncher to finish downloading the files, but I can't see anything happening and I've waited about fifteen minutes with no sign of life. Is it just server load or do I have a problem?

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Cosmic Osmo for iOS is a must!