Introduction

OpenStreetMaps (OSM) is quoted to be a "free wiki world map". The OSM tile server is essentially a web server specialized in delivering raster maps. It serves them as static ties and is also able to perform rendering in real-time or providing cached images.

Install Dependencies

we will start by updating our Ubuntu repositories

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Once done, we will start install the required base packages

sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib postgis postgresql-10-postgis-2.4 postgresql-10-postgis-2.4-scripts osm2pgsql git

Just a brief description of all the above dependencies are mentioned below:

• Postgres is the default database solution we will use for data persistence
• Postgis is used for spatial data
• Osm2pgsql is used to import the data into our postgres database
• Git is a code versioning tool which we will use for cloning repositories

Furthermore, we will install mapnik packages and Node.js (npm)

sudo apt-get install curl unzip gdal-bin mapnik-utils libmapnik-dev nodejs npm

Now, we will globally install carlo dependency

sudo npm install -g carto

We will now install mod_tile and renderd to render and display tiles

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:osmadmins/ppa && sudo apt install libapache2-mod-tile renderd

Lastly, we will install certain font packages that are required

sudo apt-get install ttf-dejavu fonts-noto-cjk fonts-noto-hinted fonts-noto-unhinted ttf-unifont

Ufff.... 😅, I think we are done with installing packages. Now let's move on to the setup.

Setup

Firstly, we will begin by switching over to our postgres user

sudo -u postgres -i

Now, let's create a new database user

createuser osm

Next, we will create a new database named gis with the owner as the new user we have just created

createdb -E UTF8 -O osm gis

Now, setting the owner

psql -c "ALTER TABLE spatial_ref_sys OWNER TO osm;" -d gis

We will also enable two extensions for our created database

psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION postgis;" -d gis

psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION hstore;" -d gis

Now, that we have setup our postgres database for importing the tile data we can now exit

exit

Let's now set up a system user called osm

adduser osm

Now, we will clone the repository that contains styles and transformations scripts that we will need for database imports

git clone https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto.git

Next, we will download the map data we will be using wget

wget -c http://planet.openstreetmap.org/pbf/planet-latest.osm.pbf

Now, alas, we can start importing the data

osm2pgsql --slim -d gis --hstore --multi-geometry --number-processes 2 --tag-transform-script /home/osm/openstreetmap-carto/openstreetmap-carto.lua --style /home/osm/openstreetmap-carto/openstreetmap-carto.style -C 12000 planet-latest.osm.pbf

Note: The -C option should be used in a way that it matches the amount of RAM on your PC/Virtual Machine and --number-processes matches the number of CPU cores.

Since this process will take quite a bit of time. It is recommended to run the entire process using a screen multiplex session. For a quickie on screen please click here. 👈

Now we use the osm user and go into the directory where we had cloned the openstreetmap-carto repository and run the python script that loads the shapefiles from the internet

scripts/get-shapefiles.py

Shapefiles are a format in which we can store GeoJSON data.

Now, we will use carto global dependency that was installed to convert project.mml file to a style file for mapnik to use

carto project.mml > style.xml

Now, we will configure renderd

nano /etc/renderd.conf

There are a few points to note here:

• num_threads should match the number of cores on your map server.
• plugins_dir should be /usr/lib/mapnik/3.0/input
• XML should match the style file generated

Save the file, now we will edit the initialization script in /etc/init.d/renderd

nano /etc/init.d/renderd

Here the RUNASUSER be set to osm

Now, we will change the permission of the mod_file folder

sudo chown osm:osm /var/lib/mod_tile/ -R

Now, we can reload the daemon and restart renderd

sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Now, you might browse to the address http:/127.0.0.1/osm/slippymap.html and select local tiles to view your imported map tiles.

Voila! That's pretty much it, you have setup your own tile server.

Happy Grizzly 🐻 Coding!