osm2pgsql

I'm experimenting with importing the OSM database to a solid state disk. I hear they can be pretty fast. I expect it will take time to get the configuration right.

Default settings, mounted with noatime

First try it with all settings as default as possible. Mount the ssd with noatime to reduce writes to the ssd.  read more »

fdisk whole disk as one partition
mke2fs -t ext3 /dev/sdd1
# /etc/fstab
/dev/sdd1  /ssd  ext3   noatime  0 0 
# create tablespace on ssd
# create db on tablespace  

Configure a database for OpenStreetMap on another disk

Perhaps you need more space for your OpenStreetMap database and decide to move it to your shiny new big disk or RAID array? Sound good? Here we go. We need to create a tablespace for the database, then use it.

Create a directory for the database
sudo mkdir /raid/newgis
sudo chown postgres:postgres /raid/newgis

As the postgres user
sudo -u postgres -i

Create a user for this database. Perhaps replace username with your username? Sure.  read more »

Build your own OpenStreetMap server. Build your own what?

OpenStreetMap is the editable World map of everything. It is the Wikipedia of maps. It is to other on-line maps as Wikipedia is to Britannica. And it is awesome in every possible way.  read more »

The OpenStreetMap database gets bigger every day. The dataset is freely licensed and available in what we call a planet file. This means that if you want the OpenStreetMap dataset, you can have it. This also means that you are dealing with the entire dataset, for the whole planet, even if your interest is limited to a smaller area. If your interest is geographically limited, pushing around 6G¹ more data than you need to push around seems wasteful.  read more »

OpenStreetMap provides Free geodata and Free Software tools to use that data. A previous article demonstrates building an OpenStreetMap tile server. This article demonstrates populating it with OpenStreetMap geodata and having your server create a nice picture of a map for you.  read more »

This article is now archived as http://weait.com/content/build-your-own-openstreetmap-server-v1. The updated article is based on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Build your own OpenStreetMap server. Build your own what?  read more »