OSgrid, the popular OpenSim-based virtual world, has officially reopened to the public after a period of extended maintenance. The grid’s return marks a significant milestone for the OpenSim community, providing users with what administrators describe as “a more professional and stable experience.”

The grid went down in early March, due to problems with user inventory files.

You can read our previous article here: OSgrid enters immediate long-term maintenance.

“We’re happy to announce the official reopening of OSgrid,” the OSgrid team said in an announcement posted today. “This slightly extended downtime has allowed us to come back stronger.”

Users returning to OSgrid must follow several important technical steps to ensure a smooth transition, the grid said. All returning residents should clear both texture and inventory caches in their viewers before logging in. Additionally, region owners must update to the latest code available on the OSgrid website.

Region owners should also reload their OAR files using a specific command that forces asset reloading: load oar –force-assets filename.oar

However, inventory restoration through IAR files is temporarily delayed to maintain system stability.

The grid has also rolled out a solution for the common cloud avatar issue at LBSA Plaza, where a clickable question mark provides users with the necessary appearance folders.

OSgrid, the oldest and largest OpenSim grids, has long been a central hub for the open-source virtual world community, allowing users to attach home-based regions for free and serving as a testbed for OpenSimulator development.

Will it be the largest grid again? It has come back from longer outages before, so the odds are good.

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.

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OSgrid has entered emergency long-term maintenance after discovering that “all IAR files have been corrupted,” the grid announced yesterday.

This is really bad news for residents who hadn’t yet had time to get their inventory backups downloaded ahead of the grid’s previously announced March 21 database reset. OSgrid will now go into immediate and indefinite closure.

“Unfortunately, the current situation has become unsustainable,” the OSgrid team stated in their announcement. “After careful analysis, it has become clear that it is no longer viable to keep OSgrid online under these conditions.”

The corruption of IAR — inventory archive — files is significant as many residents were using these files to back up their inventories ahead of the planned asset wipe. Users who hadn’t already secured their content through alternative methods may now face permanent losses.

Complete rebuild planned

In light of the new problems, the grid’s administrators have decided to completely rebuild the asset system from scratch.

Assets can include objects, clothing, textures, and other items that grid residents store in their avatar inventories. Some assets might have been purchased from OpenSim content creators and can represent a financial investment. Other assets might have been created from scratch by users, representing time, effort, and creativity. As a result, some residents might be hit hard by the loss.

“We have decided to completely rebuild the assets in a new format, in order to resolve ongoing issues and provide a much more robust and sustainable infrastructure,” the announcement stated.

Unlike the previous timeline that promised a March 28 return, the team now describes the reconstruction as “lengthy and meticulous” with no specific reopening date provided.

“We intend to take the necessary time to ensure the result is stable, functional, and, most importantly, secure,” the OSgrid team stated.

Impact on OpenSim users

This sudden closure accelerates the timeline for OSgrid users who had been planning to back up their content. Users who had been creating OARs — OpenSim archive files — of their regions or transferring items to avatars on other grids will no longer be able to access their content.

The situation particularly affects users who:

• Had scheduled backups in the coming days or weeks
• Were relying on the grid’s IAR export tool
• Had placed items in the dedicated storage regions set up for the transition

For the broader OpenSim ecosystem, this emergency closure may increase migration pressure on other grids that had been preparing for a gradual influx of displaced users.

Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner also warns that other grids may suffer from similar data issues as they become popular and may need to revisit their backup policies.

“You have to maintain daily backups of the entire system to enable you to restore it to the last stable state,” he told Hypergrid Business. “If you don’t do this and only rely on data duplication then when a corruption occurs you won’t have uncorrupted copies of the files to restore to.”

Kitely runs daily backups, he said, and offers a self-service tool that allows Kitely customers to restore their regions from those backups.

“If you’re an OSGrid user who has just lost their home, I recommend you consider the data backup policies of the grid you decide to move to,” Tochner said. “The more people use a grid the more likely it will need to make use of those backup systems.”

Kitely, the third-largest grid by land area, also serves as OpenSim’s main content marketplace.

There are currently 20,954 product listings in Kitely Market containing 41,054 product variations, 35,814 of which are exportable to other grids. Kitely Market users can have their purchases automatically delivered to avatars on other grids. Kitely Market has delivered orders to 642 OpenSim grids to date, Tochner said.

Kitely Market also provides merchants with a tool that can help their customers regain items that were bought for avatars that belong to grids that have shut down or suffered inventory loss, he said.

Volunteer support

OSgrid is operated entirely by volunteers and the management asked for community understanding during this difficult period. “It is important to remember that OSgrid is run by volunteers, all of whom are deeply passionate and committed to the platform. However, it’s also important to keep in mind that our team consists of real people, parents, and professionals with lives outside of their roles within OSgrid.”

The team promised to provide regular updates on their progress but gave no indication of how frequently these updates would come or through which channels.

OSgrid’s history of challenges

This isn’t the first major disruption for OSgrid. In 2014 and 2015, the grid experienced an extended outage lasting several months, during which significant amounts of user data were lost.

The current situation appears potentially more serious, as the grid is undergoing a complete rebuild of its asset system rather than attempting to repair existing infrastructure.

OSgrid, founded in 2007, has served as both a social hub and a technical testing ground for OpenSim development. As one of the largest hypergrid-enabled virtual worlds, its extended absence will be felt throughout the OpenSim ecosystem.

For users affected by this closure, other OpenSim grids including Wolf Territories, Kitely, and Alternate Metaverse have previously offered assistance in accommodating displaced residents.

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.

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