Updating the Database

There are many different ways to update your Nominatim database. The following section describes how to keep it up-to-date using an online replication service for OpenStreetMap data For a list of other methods to add or update data see the output of nominatim add-data --help.

Installing the newest version of Pyosmium

It is recommended to install Pyosmium via pip. Make sure to use python3. Run (as the same user who will later run the updates):

pip3 install --user osmium

Setting up the update process

Next the update needs to be initialised. By default Nominatim is configured to update using the global minutely diffs.

If you want a different update source you will need to add some settings to .env. For example, to use the daily country extracts diffs for Ireland from Geofabrik add the following:

# base URL of the replication service
NOMINATIM_REPLICATION_URL="https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/ireland-and-northern-ireland-updates"
# How often upstream publishes diffs
NOMINATIM_REPLICATION_UPDATE_INTERVAL=86400
# How long to sleep if no update found yet
NOMINATIM_REPLICATION_RECHECK_INTERVAL=900

To set up the update process now run the following command:

nominatim replication --init

It outputs the date where updates will start. Recheck that this date is what you expect.

The replication --init command needs to be rerun whenever the replication service is changed.

Updating Nominatim

The following command will keep your database constantly up to date:

nominatim replication

If you have imported multiple country extracts and want to keep them up-to-date, Advanced installations section contains instructions to set up and update multiple country extracts.