Setting up your own OpenStreetMap Server

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Hi Guys,

I will try to keep it simple and straight forward. Most of the content has been taken from openstreetmap.org‘s wiki.

I end up configuring it last night so it is still fresh in my brain.

Alright first things first

If you are thinking for running a OSM server on a machine that has 4GB RAM and Intel Core Dual Core Processor then forget about it. You will need really good hardware to run your OSM server. I recommend at least 24 GB RAM and a Xeon quad core processor (Dual) with probably super fast iSCSI drives or good SSD.

To import full planet OSM data you will need more than 600GB of free Hard disk space. It can take up to 10+ days depending on your Hardware to import and Index everything planel.osm has to offer.

I will be using Ubuntu Desktop version 11.10 64 bit. for this example.

So prepare your new machine with basic Ubuntu Desktop version 11.10 64 bit. install. No need to install anything else. You can choose to download updates for the OS.

After you can login to your newly laid Ubuntu Desktop. Do the Following

1. Download latest planet.osm data or you can try to search for extracts for your Country if you don’t want to import full size planet data. I will be using Australia.osm. Thanks to Matt who is running this really helpful website http://www.osmaustralia.org
2. (optional) Extract the bz2 file to an accessible location on your Hard drive.

So now we have good Hardware and we’ve got the required OSM data files its time to get our hands dirty.

Open your Ubuntu Terminal

* TIP nearly all command will require to be run as Super User i.e. administrator.

I will be working in this directory /home/osm. You can will need to choose your own whenever possible.

Lets set up the environment first. As a prerequisites we need to install following packages

• GCC compiler
• PostgreSQL
• Proj4
• GEOS
• PostGIS
• PHP
• PHP-pgsql
• PEAR::DB

prompt>  sudo apt-get install php5-pgsql postgis postgresql php5 php-pear gcc g++ php-pear gcc proj libgeos-c1 postgresql-contrib postgresql-9.1-postgis postgresql-server-dev-9.1

prompt> pear install DB

Now that we’ve got postgreSQL installed we will tune its performance params to suit OSM importing

As per the parent article do this. You can find these params in  file

/etc/postgresql/9.1/main/postgresql.conf

You should tune the following parameters:

• shared_buffers = 4GB
• maintenance_work_mem = 4GB
• work_mem =10MB
• synchronous_commit = off
• full_page_writes = off
• checkpoint_segments = 50
• checkpoint_timeout = 10min
• checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9
• random_page_cost = 1.5 #(lower than the default of 4).

The numbers in brackets behind some parameters seem to work fine for 32GB RAM machine. You can adjust these as per your machine hardware. You can leave the default values too but that will means that you wait longer for OSM data to get imported to your DB.

After saving the file, You must restart postgreSQL server

prompt> sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart

For the initial import, you should also set:

• fsync = off
• autovacuum = off

Lets install postgreSQL client

prompt> sudo apt-get install postgresql-client

Lets install git

prompt> sudo apt-get install git

Lets install subversion (only required if you want to build osm2pgsql util from source)

prompt> sudo apt-get install subversion

We will need osm2pgsql to import our OSM data to postgreSQL (well not directly but this will be used by Nominatim).

Important

prompt> sudo apt-get install build-essential libxml2-dev libgeos-dev libpq-dev libbz2-dev proj libtool automake

We have two choices,

1. build osm2pgsql from source
2. or just install the available package

I will recommend 2 but Lets cover 1 too.

To build osm2pgsql from source run the following commands

prompt> svn co http://svn.openstreetmap.org/applications/utils/export/osm2pgsql
 prompt> cd osm2pgsql/
 prompt> sudo ./autogen.sh
 prompt> sudo ./configure
 prompt> sudo make

Or do this (easy option)

prompt> sudo apt-get install osm2pgsql

Now that we have osm2pgsql installed its time to get Nominatim

Nominatim  is a tool to search osm data by name and address and to generate synthetic addresses of osm points (reverse geocoding). It on the other hand has a website interface too.

Lets install Nominatim from source

First lets checkout/clone Nominatim from GIT

prompt> git clone http://github.com/twain47/Nominatim.git

Now lets build it.

prompt> cd Nominatim/
prompt> cd module/
prompt> sudo make
prompt> cd ..
prompt> cd nominatim/
prompt> sudo ./autogen.sh
prompt> sudo ./configure
prompt> sudo make

Lets create a website user

createuser -SDR www-data

Please note that You also need a user with supervisor rights for the account that is doing the import.

Create the Role if it does not exist. I had fun doing that but its straight forward. If you will be running this server under your current user your then create a postgreSQL role with current user name.

The stage is set to import the data.

Make sure that under your /path/to/Nominatim/settings/local.php path to osm2pgsql and CONST_Website_BaseURL constant are right. Audit other constants and change as per required.

Run the command below to import OSM data to your postgreSQL server.

prompt> cd /path/to/Nominatim
prompt> sudo ./utils/setup.php --osm-file --osm-file /path/to/planet.osm  --all

You will know in 5-10 minutes if there is something wrong. If you go pass that point leave your machine ON for many days (roughly 10+) to come.

If you get errors like database nominatim already exists then drop that database and try again until you get all the requirements sorted.

Once your data is in, Do this

Lets add country codes and names to search index

prompt> sudo ./utils/specialphrases.php --countries > specialphrases_countries.sql
prompt> psql -d nominatim -f specialphrases_countries.sql

It is also worthwhile to import special phrases to your database. Commands are shown below
prompt> sudo ./utils/specialphrases.php --wiki-import > specialphrases.sql
prompt> psql -d nominatim -f specialphrases.sql
special phrases are deemed a good Idea when you provide search for special amenities. Say for example if you are searching for hotels in Carlton Victoria will search index to find hotels in Carlton
Final thing is to setup a website so that you can make your OSM data public
Run the command below to setup a Nominatim website
prompt> sudo ./utils/setup.php --create-website /var/www/nominatim
If the above step fails then check your directory permissions and make sure that Write permission is given. You can create nominatim directory under /var/www as shown below and then run the command above
prompt> sudo mkdir /var/www/nominatim
Under your /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file add these lines
<Directory "/var/www/nominatim/">
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AddType text/html .php
 </Directory>

If you want your default website to be your OSM maps then you will need to edit /etc/apache2/site-available/default and change /var/www to /var/www/nominatim
Thats it
restart your apache server /etc/init.d/apache restart and address your browser to whatever domain you’ve mentioned in settings/local.php under this contant  CONST_Website_BaseURL
You will see a page like this.

Now when I try to search for bundoora victoria, I get the following result

 


 
I hope this helps
Cheers!
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