The server is the computer the MOO is run on.
No computer, no MOO. The server has to run some kind of Unix operating system.
Any one of the usual Unix flavored servers, sun, sgi, and their ilk, will do.
You can also run the MOO on a PC or a Mac;
however,
you will have to install Unix first. Linux, or Free-BSD, are usually the flavor
of
choice because they are shareware. It may be better to install Unix even though there is cost
involved. Just remember that the requirements for the PC are the same as for any other server;
whatever the platform, the server must have enough RAM and CPU frequency to serve the MOO
without too much lag.
While it is preferable to run the MOO on a computer by itself so that it will not have to compete
with
other applications for memory, you do not need an entire server
dedicated solely to the MOO. MOOs have been run successfully on servers with other
applications such as news groups and web servers. The important thing is that the server have
enough RAM, which will help to prevent server lag, the bane of
a
MOO existence.
If you do not have the resources to purchase your own server, you might be
able to share space on someone else's server, or lacking that, rent
space on a server. Regardless of how you acquire a server, you will want
to keep in mind the basic requirements for your
choice of server. These requirements depend on the size of your MOO and how
big you think it's going to be,
the computer type, and the operating system. You should
look for how much space, RAM, you can use on the server, how much processor
power and how much hard drive you can have, all of which determine how
big the MOO can get and if it will be lagged or not.
An example for a fictitious MOO follows, illustrating how you might estimate
server requirements based on what you want the MOO to do.
These estimates can vary, depending on different computer types and
the set-up of the MOOserver.
The computer for a MOO with a database
of approximately 15M(egabytes):
You will need at least 32M of RAM to run the MOO. But you should
have more to compensate for the
checkpoints as well. When checkpointing, the MOO will need twice
the amount of RAM it usually uses. You can do this by either not
forking the MOO at checkpoints, or
by having virtual memory, using
swapping, or by having enough RAM.
The MOO contains two copies of the complete database and also
keeps a log file of the MOO
program itself as it runs. Therefore, the minimum space required
for a 15M MOO is 50M. The amount of hard disk space is dependent on how
many backups you want to keep for security reasons. You will also
want to have some backups of the database from earlier days for safety.
We will look more into backups in the section on running the
MOO.
So, although you might be able to squeak by with 50M, you really should
have closer to 100M of hard disk to ensure the security of the database.
The computer has to run some kind of the unix
operating system and be
equipped with the usual net communications packages. It also has to
be connected to the internet for all the world to reach it, or just
a local net if its use is to be restricted heavily.
More on restrictions in a later section.
Note:
You don't need a computer as big as this to start a MOO. I think
the minimum requirements would be 8M of RAM, and about 20M hard
disk. But this would limit your MOO to very few players
and objects.
Back to the implementation index.