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Install on Ubuntu 24🔗

Note: these installation instructions are also available in executable form for use with vagrant under vagrant/Install-on-Ubuntu-24.sh.

Installing the Required Software🔗

These instructions expect that you have a freshly installed Ubuntu 24.04.

Make sure all packages 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 osm2pgsql postgresql-postgis postgresql-postgis-scripts \
                        pkg-config libicu-dev virtualenv git

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.

The following instructions assume you are logged in as this user. You can also switch to the user with:

sudo -u nominatim bash

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/16/main/postgresql.conf. See section Tuning the PostgreSQL database 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

Installing Nominatim🔗

Building and Configuration🔗

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

cd $USERHOME
git clone https://github.com/osm-search/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://nominatim.org/data/country_grid.sql.gz

Nominatim should be installed in a separate Python virtual environment. Create the virtual environment:

virtualenv $USERHOME/nominatim-venv

We want the faster binary version pf psycopg, so install that:

$USERHOME/nominatim-venv/bin/pip install psycopg[binary]

Now install Nominatim using pip:

cd $USERHOME/Nominatim
$USERHOME/nominatim-venv/bin/pip install packaging/nominatim-db

Nominatim is now ready to use. The nominatim binary is available at $USERHOME/venv/bin/nominatim. If you want to have 'nominatim' in your path, simply activate the virtual environment:

. $USERHOME/nominatim-venv/bin/activate

You can continue with importing a database from OSM data. If you want to set up the API frontend first, continue reading.

Setting up the Python frontend🔗

The Python frontend is contained in the nominatim-api package. To run the API as a webservice, you also need falcon with uvicorn to serve the API. It is generally recommended to run falcon/uvicorn on top of gunicorn.

To install all packages, run:

$USERHOME/nominatim-venv/bin/pip install falcon uvicorn gunicorn
cd $USERHOME/Nominatim
$USERHOME/nominatim-venv/bin/pip install packaging/nominatim-api

Next you need to create a systemd job that runs Nominatim on gunicorn. First create a systemd job that manages the socket file:

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/nominatim.socket << EOFSOCKETSYSTEMD
[Unit]
Description=Gunicorn socket for Nominatim

[Socket]
ListenStream=/run/nominatim.sock
SocketUser=www-data

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOFSOCKETSYSTEMD

Then create the service for Nominatim itself.

sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/nominatim.service << EOFNOMINATIMSYSTEMD
[Unit]
Description=Nominatim running as a gunicorn application
After=network.target
Requires=nominatim.socket

[Service]
Type=simple
User=www-data
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=$USERHOME/nominatim-project
ExecStart=$USERHOME/nominatim-venv/bin/gunicorn -b unix:/run/nominatim.sock -w 4 -k uvicorn.workers.UvicornWorker "nominatim_api.server.falcon.server:run_wsgi()"
ExecReload=/bin/kill -s HUP \$MAINPID
PrivateTmp=true
TimeoutStopSec=5
KillMode=mixed

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOFNOMINATIMSYSTEMD

Activate the services:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable nominatim.socket
sudo systemctl start nominatim.socket
sudo systemctl enable nominatim.service

Setting up a webserver🔗

The webserver is only needed as a proxy between the public interface and the gunicorn service.

The frontend will need configuration information from the project directory, which will be populated later during the import process Already create the project directory itself now:

mkdir $USERHOME/nominatim-project

Option 1: Using Apache🔗

First install apache itself and enable the proxy module:

sudo apt-get install -y apache2
sudo a2enmod proxy_http

To set up proxying for Apache add the following configuration:

sudo tee /etc/apache2/conf-available/nominatim.conf << EOFAPACHECONF

ProxyPass /nominatim "unix:/run/nominatim.sock|http://localhost/"
EOFAPACHECONF

Then enable the configuration and restart apache

sudo a2enconf nominatim

sudo systemctl restart apache2

The Nominatim API is now available at http://localhost/nominatim/. Point your browser to the status output http://localhost/nominatim/status to test if everything is ok.

Option 2: Using nginx🔗

First install nginx itself:

sudo apt-get install -y nginx

Then create a Nginx configuration to forward http requests to that socket.

sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/default << EOF_NGINX_CONF
server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    root $USERHOME/nominatim-project/website;
    index /search;

    location /nominatim/ {
            proxy_set_header Host \$http_host;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For \$proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto \$scheme;
            proxy_redirect off;
            proxy_pass http://unix:/run/nominatim.sock:/;
    }
}
EOF_NGINX_CONF

Enable the configuration and restart Nginx

sudo systemctl restart nginx

The Nominatim API is now available at http://localhost/nominatim/. Point your browser to the status output http://localhost/nominatim/status to test if everything is ok.