Re: OpenStreetMap tile rendering stack in debian-gis

[Hamish <hamish_b@yahoo.com>]

Mike wrote:
> I think this is a great idea to have a simple way to get
> rendering.

It's the holy grail. :)

having said that, downloading an OSM extract file locally, then
using osm2pgsql to put it in a PostGIS database, then using
Mapnik to render and present in a lightweight locally running
web browser is not difficult, just tedious to figure out the
first time. (.. thus mention of the live dvd setup script for
that)


> Also it would be nice to be able to select regions that you
> want to render via some package, lets say I am in kansas,
> imagine if there was a package like debian-region-us-ks that
> you could install to subscribe to updates in that area.

If someone wanted to maintain a script to do that and host
packages which updated weekly/monthly it might be ok, but
this is highly evolving highly updated data with no official
releases. Packaging for debian's 18 month release cycle (+/-)
seems like republishing an arbitrary newspaper from 2 years ago
to me. It would be a big job, and need server space and
bandwith... check out CloudMade's website, they already provide
these extracts as raw data. (the OSM wiki may mention other
sources too, at varying levels of out-of-date)

It's a good case for something that might be useful in a PPA actually.


generating a "planet file" data extract is pretty easy, e.g.

CITY="Nottingham"
BBOX="-1.25,52.888,-1.06,53.02"
# visualize:
#http://www.openstreetmap.org/?box=yes&bbox=$BBOX

# Overpass server with Xapi compatibility layer
XAPI_URL="http://www.overpass-api.de/api/xapi?";

# needed for Overpass server:
XAPI_EXTRA="[@meta]"

wget --progress=dot:mega -O "$CITY.osm" \
       "${XAPI_URL}*[bbox=$BBOX]$XAPI_EXTRA"

bzip2 "$CITY.osm"


(as documented in the live dvd script..)



best,
Hamish