[Geocoding] Empty search_name in Nominatim DB

[Sarah Hoffmann]

Hi Dimitry,

On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 12:24:34AM +0400, Dmitry Dzhus wrote:
> I've installed Nominatim on my server and performed the initial import with
> 
> ./utils/setup.php --osm-file <pbf> --all
> 
> I can't get Nominatim to perform geocoding: search.php returns zero results.
> Reverse geocoding, however, works as expected for the imported location.

Could you give some more details. in particular what distribution, postgresql
and postgis version you are using and which extract you are trying to import?

> After comparing debug output from my server and
> nominatim.openstreetmap.org, I've discovered that Nominatim first
> selects tokens from `words` (this query succeeds in my server and
> returns results similar to the online nominatim (save for word IDs
> which is expected)), and then proceeds to fetch `place_id`s from
> `search_name` table.
> 
> Perhaps this is where my Nominatim instance fails: my Postgres table
> `search_name` is empty. I assume that this is not expected for a fresh
> installation.

No, that should not happen.

> The import log seems to contain no error messages, save for these:
> 
> Using projection SRS 4326 (Latlong)
> NOTICE:  table "place" does not exist, skipping
> NOTICE:  type "keyvalue" does not exist, skipping
> NOTICE:  type "wordscore" does not exist, skipping
> NOTICE:  type "stringlanguagetype" does not exist, skipping
> NOTICE:  type "keyvaluetype" does not exist, skipping
> NOTICE:  function get_connected_ways(pg_catalog.int4[]) does not
> exist, skipping
> 
> (which I believe are not errors at all)

Those notices are ok. Could you check that the postgresql log does
not contain any error messages from the import? (There will be lots
of warnings about missing chars, you can ignore them.) If there are
problems with permissions, they should show up there.

> Re-importing did not help. Can you point at something I can do to
> track down the source of issue?

First of all, compare the details pages of the official server and
your installation for a few objects. (See
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim/FAQ#My_data_is_still_missing_and_it.27s_been_several_days
for the URL to use). In particular check if names, rank and address
level are the same.

If that looks good, run the following two queries to confirm that
transliteration works:
select make_standard_name('new york');
select make_keywords(hstore('name', 'new york'));

They should not return empty results or errors.

Sarah