Note: these installation instructions are also available in executable form for use with vagrant under vagrant/Install-on-Centos-7.sh.

Installing the Required Software

These instructions expect that you have a freshly installed CentOS version 7. Make sure all packages are up-to-date by running:

sudo yum update -y

The standard CentOS repositories don't contain all the required packages, you need to enable the EPEL repository as well. To enable it on CentOS, install the epel-release RPM by running:

sudo yum install -y epel-release

Now you can install all packages needed for Nominatim:

sudo yum install -y postgresql-server postgresql-contrib postgresql-devel \
                    postgis postgis-utils \
                    wget git cmake make gcc gcc-c++ libtool policycoreutils-python \
                    php-pgsql php php-intl libpqxx-devel \
                    proj-epsg bzip2-devel proj-devel libxml2-devel boost-devel \
                    expat-devel zlib-devel

If you want to run the test suite, you need to install the following additional packages:

sudo yum install -y python34-pip python34-setuptools python34-devel \
                    php-phpunit-PHPUnit
pip3 install --user behave nose pytidylib psycopg2

composer global require "squizlabs/php_codesniffer=*"
sudo ln -s ~/.config/composer/vendor/bin/phpcs /usr/bin/

System Configuration

The following steps are meant to configure a fresh CentOS installation for use with Nominatim. You may skip some of the steps if you have your OS already configured.

Creating Dedicated User Accounts

Nominatim will run as a global service on your machine. It is therefore best to install it under its own separate user account. In the following we assume this user is called nominatim and the installation will be in /srv/nominatim. To create the user and directory run:

sudo useradd -d /srv/nominatim -s /bin/bash -m nominatim

You may find a more suitable location if you wish.

To be able to copy and paste instructions from this manual, export user name and home directory now like this:

export USERNAME=nominatim
export USERHOME=/srv/nominatim

Never, ever run the installation as a root user. You have been warned.

Make sure that system servers can read from the home directory:

chmod a+x $USERHOME

Setting up PostgreSQL

CentOS does not automatically create a database cluster. Therefore, start with initializing the database, then enable the server to start at boot:

sudo postgresql-setup initdb
sudo systemctl enable postgresql

Next tune the postgresql configuration, which is located in /var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf. See section Postgres Tuning in the installation page for the parameters to change.

Now start the postgresql service after updating this config file.

sudo systemctl restart postgresql

Finally, we need to add two postgres users: one for the user that does the import and another for the webserver which should access the database only for reading:

sudo -u postgres createuser -s $USERNAME
sudo -u postgres createuser apache

Setting up the Apache Webserver

You need to create an alias to the website directory in your apache configuration. Add a separate nominatim configuration to your webserver:

sudo tee /etc/httpd/conf.d/nominatim.conf << EOFAPACHECONF
<Directory "$USERHOME/build/website">
  Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
  AddType text/html   .php
  DirectoryIndex search.php
  Require all granted
</Directory>

Alias /nominatim $USERHOME/build/website
EOFAPACHECONF

Then reload apache

sudo systemctl enable httpd
sudo systemctl restart httpd

Installing Nominatim

Building and Configuration

Get the source code from Github and change into the source directory

cd $USERHOME
git clone --recursive git://github.com/openstreetmap/Nominatim.git
cd Nominatim

When installing the latest source from github, you also need to download the country grid:

wget -O data/country_osm_grid.sql.gz https://www.nominatim.org/data/country_grid.sql.gz

The code must be built in a separate directory. Create this directory, then configure and build Nominatim in there:

cd $USERHOME
mkdir build
cd build
cmake $USERHOME/Nominatim
make

Adding SELinux Security Settings

It is a good idea to leave SELinux enabled and enforcing, particularly with a web server accessible from the Internet. At a minimum the following SELinux labeling should be done for Nominatim:

sudo semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "$USERHOME/Nominatim/(website|lib|settings)(/.*)?"
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "$USERHOME/build/(website|lib|settings)(/.*)?"
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t lib_t "$USERHOME/build/module/nominatim.so"
sudo restorecon -R -v $USERHOME/Nominatim
sudo restorecon -R -v $USERHOME/build

You need to create a minimal configuration file that tells nominatim the name of your webserver user and the URL of the website:

tee settings/local.php << EOF
<?php
 @define('CONST_Database_Web_User', 'apache');
 @define('CONST_Website_BaseURL', '/nominatim/');
EOF

Nominatim is now ready to use. Continue with importing a database from OSM data.