Add and start an avatar

Register

Open Avatars → Setup, choose Add Avatar, and enter the first name, last name and password. The UUID may be left empty for the login to discover.

The two name fields need one explanation, because Second Life has had two naming systems. Older accounts were given a first name and a chosen surname, Xena Okelly for instance, and for those you type what you already know: Xena in First Name, Okelly in Last Name.

Accounts made under the newer system have one name only. Second Life still keeps a surname for them, and that surname is the word Resident. So an avatar called simply NeuraCore is registered here as NeuraCore in First Name and Resident in Last Name, spelled exactly like that, with a capital R. Leaving Last Name empty, or typing the whole name into First Name, produces a login the grid refuses, because neither is the name it holds.

This is only about registering the account. Everywhere else in NeuraCore the Resident surname can be left off: an order naming a resident finds NeuraCore whether or not you write it.

Grid says where the avatar lives. It offers Second Life or OpenSim, and then which grid: Second Life’s main grid is the default and is the right answer for almost everybody. See “Avatars on OpenSim grids” for the rest.

The first time, NeuraCore asks for a master password. It protects the locally saved avatar passwords; remember it, because NeuraCore cannot recover it for you.

Connect

Open Avatars → Start and press Connect beside one avatar, or Connect All. With several avatars, the saved delay starts them one after another instead of all at once.

In the avatar window, Master → Auto connect/reconnect connects that avatar as soon as NeuraCore starts and brings it back about every thirty seconds after an unexpected disconnection.

• Offline means the avatar is not connected.
• Connecting means login is still in progress.
• Online means the avatar window is ready.

If the account uses multifactor authentication

Second Life offers multifactor authentication, and an account that has it switched on is asked for a code as well as its password. Nothing tells a viewer in advance which accounts those are: NeuraCore starts connecting exactly as it always does, and the grid says so partway through.

When that happens, a small window opens for that avatar and asks for the code. Second Life sends it to the email address on the account, or your authentication app produces it. Type it in and the connection carries on from where it stopped. Cancel, and the avatar simply stays offline; nothing else is affected.

You are then not asked again for thirty days. Second Life hands NeuraCore a key that stands in for the code, NeuraCore keeps it beside that avatar’s password, encrypted under your master password, and sends it at every login until it expires. When it does, the next connection asks once more.

Multifactor authentication and unattended avatars

This needs thinking about before you leave an avatar to reconnect on its own. A code can only be typed by somebody sitting at the computer. An avatar set to connect and reconnect by itself will do so happily for thirty days and then, at the first login after the key expires, stop and wait for a code nobody is there to give it. If that happens while you are away, the avatar stays offline until you come back.

There are two honest answers and you have to choose one. Either you sit down at that computer once a month and answer the prompt yourself, which keeps the account protected, or you turn multifactor authentication off for that avatar.

Turning it off is genuinely dangerous, and it is your decision and your risk. An account without it is protected by its password alone, and an unattended avatar is exactly the kind of account somebody would try. If you do it, do it only for an avatar that has nothing worth taking: no Linden dollar balance, no transferable items, no group powers over land or money, and nothing you would mind losing. Keep your main avatar, and any avatar holding money or inventory of value, protected.

Authenticated avatar identity

You may leave the avatar UUID empty. When the ownership check signs in successfully, NeuraCore saves the UUID returned by the grid before setting the avatar as main. Every successful avatar login also fills in a missing UUID or corrects an incorrect one.