From scratch and testing ideas: DebianGIS with Postgresql, Drupal and OpenLayers

Here we go again to try to build a server for GIS using Debian.

Downloaded the image from

http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.3/amd64/iso-cd/debian-6.0.3-amd64-netinst.iso

For the basic install (I’ll be doing the install in a VM). Language: Portuguese Brazilian. All other options were kept as the defaults, choosing single filesystem and all mount points on the same partition. Other change: ext4 instead of ext3, and removed the option of the Desktop. The installation was over under 15 min.

Now, configuring the backport repositories: From here[debian backports], add this line to the /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main

Do an apt-get update, and install the necessary packages. First, from main reps:

apt-get --no-install-recommends install vim make build-essential gcc g++ gfortran ssh

Done. Time to start installing the web packages:

apt-get --no-install-recommends -t squeeze-backports install apache2 postgresql-9.1 postgis php5-pgsql php5 php5-cgi php5-gd vsftpd

That’s why I _love_ Debian. Let’s proceed: now it’s time to configure the basic database for the next step, installing drupal. Following this drupal documentation, 

su - postgres
createuser --pwprompt --encrypted --no-adduser --no-createdb drupal
createdb --encoding=UNICODE --owner=drupal drupaldb

Done! User and database for drupal created. Now it’s time to dowload drupal itself. I chose to download drupal 7 from the website than from the debian repositories because of some debian particularities, like versioning. I downloaded the latest version from here[drupal.org]:

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-7.9.tar.gz

And downloaded to /var/www. As I’m planning this server to be run exclusively as a GIS server, I extracted all drupal files to /var/www, and _not_ inside the directory drupal-7.9. After redirecting the ports from Virtualbox, we’re ready to start the drupal installation. First, changing the permission for the files to 775, user and group to www-data, and following drupal installation instructions[drupal.org]:

cp sites/default/default.settings.php sites/default/settings.php

Just remember that if there is an error with php, you have to restart apache and close your browser: google chrome kept insisting in downloading install.php instead of running it, even if phpinfo() was running ok. So let’s continue: Standard installation, English, and use the database name (drupaldb) and user (drupal) with the password that was configured before, and drupal should install. The ftp server that drupal uses for update (we installed the vsftpd) should be also configured: in the file /etc/vsftpd.conf, the local users option must be enabled:

Uncomment this to allow local users to log in.
local_enable = YES

Drupal should be running! Time to install new modules, the ones that OpenLayers [drupal.org] requests:

Views: http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/views-7.x-3.0-rc3.tar.gz

OpenLayers: http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/openlayers-7.x-2.0-beta1.tar.gz

Chaos Tools: http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/ctools-7.x-1.0-rc1.tar.gz

And went to the Modules administration in drupal to enable the new modules. That’s it! The webserver is working with all the necessary modules!

There is another tool that seems to be very useful in this context: drush. To make it work, php-pear must be installed. Now,

pear channel-discovery pear.drush.org
pear install drush/drush

After that, another module will be integrated: geofield, for the geographical data manipulation. Drush didn’t help, so I had to install by hand drupal libraries

http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/libraries-7.x-1.0.tar.gz

And after enabling it, installed the geofield module:

Geofield: http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/geofield-7.x-1.0-beta2.tar.gz

Enabled it, and it’s working! Server up and fully loaded. Now it’s time to start writing code…

* NOTE * I didn’t take ANY security measures to secure the server. There are several things that should be changed to secure apache, drupal, ssh, ftp…