New appliance: MapServer

[mverwijmeren]

MapServer is an Open Source platform for publishing spatial data and interactive mapping applications to the web.

• Repository: https://github.com/mverwijmeren/mapserver
• Tracker: https://github.com/turnkeylinux/tracker/wiki/MapServer
• Upstream: http://www.mapserver.org
• by @mverwijmeren

Since everything in this appliance (so far) is available in the Debian Wheezy repositories, this was not a difficult appliance to develop.

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[mverwijmeren]

So far this is only tested in a KVM virtual machine and only built for amd64.

[lirazsiri]

Kudos on developing your first TurnKey appliance! I love it when all the components are already in Debian and you just need to glue them together. MapServer will make a great addition to the library. Do you use this yourself?

PS: I added the #new-appliance tag.

[mverwijmeren]

I'm active in the Openstreetmap community. One of the problems we have is that people want to scrape map tiles from public tile servers to use them offline on their mobile phones. Several apps doing that had to be banned. (If too many people are scraping, then it's effectively the same as a DDOS attack.)

I built this MapServer appliance so I have a platform on which I can develop what I call a personal tile server. It's going to be a set of instructions plus some simple tools. With this (and VirtualBox) even people living in a MS-Windows world should then be able to generate their own tiles.

[lirazsiri]

Now I get it. Hey, that's pretty cool! So instead of having people
scrape from the public site you would offer a concentrated dump of tiles
which people running MapServer would be able to download and easily setup?

How would that work in practice? Would MapServer users download the map
data for a region? The world? Or maybe it should act as a sort of
caching proxy and download tiles on demand through an API?

BTW, I'm really excited about being able to use TurnKey to help
alleviate a problem OpenStreetMap is having. It's a great project!

On 25/07/14 02:34, Martijn Verwijmeren wrote:

I'm active in the Openstreetmap community. One of the problems we have is that people want to scrape map tiles from public tile servers to use them offline on their mobile phones. Several apps doing that had to be banned. (If too many people are scraping, then it's effectively the same as a DDOS attack.)

I built this MapServer appliance so I have a platform on which I can develop what I call a personal tile server. It's going to be a set of instructions plus some simple tools. With this (and VirtualBox) even people living in a MS-Windows world should then be able to generate their own tiles.

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#248 (comment)

[mverwijmeren]

There are several websites that offer compressed raw Openstreetmap data for countries/regions/cities. This data can be imported into PostgreSQL/PostGIS. Then MapServer can turn this vector data into tiles (raster images).

But I still have to build that ;) This appliance is for people who want a quick start with MapServer and any geodata they just happen to have.

[lirazsiri]

OK, I was just curious about that. An appliance integration doesn't have
to have all the bells and whistles to be useful or work for everybody,
just to be a more convenient route to getting started than setting up
everything from scratch yourself.

On 25/07/14 18:48, Martijn Verwijmeren wrote:

There are several websites that offer compressed raw Openstreetmap data for countries/regions/cities. This data can be imported into PostgreSQL/PostGIS. Then MapServer can turn this vector data into tiles (raster images).

But I still have to build that ;) This appliance is for people who want a quick start with MapServer and any geodata they just happen to have.

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#248 (comment)

[acwalter]

Great to see this project. I have been using GeoServer on top of Turnkey tomcat, I will have to give this a try. I also just built a PostGIS server last week using the turnkey Postgresql and the postGIS package here:
http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/wiki/UsersWikiPostGIS21UbuntuPGSQL93Apt

[lirazsiri]

Let us know how it goes Andrew. Any feedback you can provide will help
improve the integration before it gets officially rolled into the library.

On 14/08/14 03:51, Andrew Walter wrote:

Great to see this project. I have been using GeoServer on top of Turnkey tomcat, I will have to give this a try. I also just built a PostGIS server last week using the turnkey Postgresql and the postGIS package here:
http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/wiki/UsersWikiPostGIS21UbuntuPGSQL93Apt

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#248 (comment)

[COLABORATI]

@mverwijmeren - is there some more information about the personal tile server project?

[COLABORATI]

Hi, I now spent some time to understand what TKL exactly is (Google lead me here) and I am willing to spend one or two nights to learn more about the TKL development process - however, it would be great to have a link to some information here how to get this thing to start up and run. I am willing to dig deeper into the whole TKL infrastructure, but I just want to run this app right now.

I did found some documentation - but unfortunately the most relevant part (for me) - how to build and test an ISO - is left out (topic 16).

@lirazsiri, I found some other documentation but it is much to verbose for me, atm I just want to start and test this app! It would be very nice if you would understand this usecase and make it much easier for developers / admins to take a quick dip of TKL and then, when we like it, we still can dig deeper. However, the quick start just is not here (or a link to it).

Actually I just want to know: where do I have to run this make file? In which kind of dev environment / virtual machine?

Just a few lines of instructions would be enough, or maybe a shell script that does what is needed to get this up. THANK YOU!

[JedMeister]

FWIW our forums are the best place for this sort of discussion.

But while we're here; I suggest that you install (content is quite dated and shows installation of a different appliance but in essence it's still relevant) and set up TKLDev in a VM (VirtualBox is a popular cross-platform option).

Then build TKL Core (documented on the set up page here).

Any major issues should result in errors and failure to build the core iso. Although if you want to be totally sure that everything worked, then you can copy out the iso that you made and install that (in a new VM - in VirtualBox or whatever you're using).

Once you have confirmed that all is well with TKLDev; then repeat the steps to make core; but with MapServer instead.

I suggest that any general TKLDev issue you post about in the forums (link above) and MapServer specific issues there too (prob start a new thread and post a link here?). Or you could post here. Or if you are sure that it's a MapServer issue (e.g. it builds ok but something is wrong or doesn't work as you expect in the running server) then on @mverwijmeren repo itself may even be the go...

[COLABORATI]

Thank you for the shortcut, seems to work! Now I feel like digging deeper into TKL, still an interesting alternative to other remote config systems!

[COLABORATI]

The iso seems to work fine, however think there is not data in it to actually display any maps. I filed an issue here mverwijmeren/mapserver#2 - if it is not finished, maybe I will find some time... but do not hold your breath, may take a very long time.

[JedMeister]

@COLABORATI - you are most welcome...

Glad to hear that you find TKL/TKLDev interesting! :)

That's a pity that it doesn't contain the data to display maps. I know nothing about it so have no idea how to even begin going about that... However if you do find any info please feel free to post here (or on the issue you posted) as even that would save someone else some work! :)

[update[ Actually I just did a quick scan of the thread and read this comment. That exlains your experience...!