[OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Pledge: planet.osm Download

Christopher Schmidt crschmidt at crschmidt.net
Wed May 31 12:57:38 BST 2006


On Wed, May 31, 2006 at 09:13:42AM +0200, Joerg Ostertag wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> > IT's built off the only planet.osm data I could find -- from beginning
> > of April, all the mirrors have  old data or weren't responding -- but
> > even so, I think it's pretty cool.
> 
> I just checked my mirror and I was able to download the May File of 
> planet.osm. from
>   http://www.ostertag.name/osm/planet-2006-05-01.osm.bz2
> This only holds the western hemisphere, but at least it newer than your april 
> one.

Yep, I think this is the one I eventually found, but it was not
responding (probably local issues) when I tried the first time -- I
appreciate your putting it up, as it did make me happy to eventually
find something :) It was just slightly frustrating when I thought I was
using the latest data, only to find out I wasn't.

> I'm currently also uploading my current regional snapshots to
>  http://www.ostertag.name/osm/current-snapshots/
> (This will take some time, since my upload is only DSL)
> This might help you to get more current Data for your Rendering.
> These snapshot cover each an area 5-Degrees x 5-Degrees and I update them 
> everytime I want to see a new version of an area inside gpsdrive. But I could 
> try updating them on a regular base if needed. I personally would think of 
> weekly or every three days.
> If needed I also could try combining them to a large new planet-new.osm File

That's a pretty cool idea, and one I was actually talking about last
night. How do you get the 5degree by 5 degree sections? Maybe I've
simply been unlucky, insofar as I've not been able to actually get areas
this large via the API -- even downloading a very smal lsection of inner
london has taken me a really long time in some cases. (Long enough that
Firefox times out -- but this may be a configurable HTTP client
setting?)

I would be happy to be assigned a time where I could issue requests for
the data, and I would build a planet.osm file from the fetched data.
However, I don't have the intention of hammering the UI and hurting the
servers to get it.

I guess my main problem is I don't know how much I should limit my use
of the API. I was under the impression that doing something like this
via the API would not be the best way to do it, for the OSM server -- in
my experience, it's much nicer to get the data direct from the source
than it is to hammer the API to get it. So I'll wait, rather than
explore options that might hurt the OSM server, unless someone tells me
it's better not to :)

-- 
Christopher Schmidt
Web Developer




More information about the talk mailing list