Note: these installation instructions are also available in executable form for use with vagrant under vagrant/Install-on-Ubuntu-18.sh.

Installing the Required Software

These instructions expect that you have a freshly installed Ubuntu 18.04.

Make sure all packages are are up-to-date by running:

sudo apt-get update -qq

Now you can install all packages needed for Nominatim:

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential cmake g++ libboost-dev libboost-system-dev \
                        libboost-filesystem-dev libexpat1-dev zlib1g-dev libxml2-dev \
                        libbz2-dev libpq-dev libproj-dev \
                        postgresql-server-dev-10 postgresql-10-postgis-2.4 \
                        postgresql-contrib-10 postgresql-10-postgis-scripts \
                        apache2 php php-pgsql libapache2-mod-php \
                        php-intl git

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

sudo apt-get install -y python3-setuptools python3-dev python3-pip \
                        python3-psycopg2 python3-tidylib phpunit php-cgi

pip3 install --user behave nose

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 Ubuntu 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

Tune the postgresql configuration, which is located in /etc/postgresql/10/main/postgresql.conf. See section Postgres Tuning in the installation page for the parameters to change.

Restart 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 for reading only:

sudo -u postgres createuser -s $USERNAME
sudo -u postgres createuser www-data

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/apache2/conf-available/nominatim.conf << EOFAPACHECONF
<Directory "$USERHOME/Nominatim/build/website">
  Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
  AddType text/html   .php
  DirectoryIndex search.php
  Require all granted
</Directory>

Alias /nominatim $USERHOME/Nominatim/build/website
EOFAPACHECONF

Then enable the configuration and restart apache

sudo a2enconf nominatim
sudo systemctl restart apache2

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:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake $USERHOME/Nominatim
make

You need to create a minimal configuration file that tells nominatim where it is located on the webserver:

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

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