[OSM-talk] rendering with mapnik, what do I need?

[Jo]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your answer.

Chris Jones wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2008, Jo wrote:
>
>> Say I would like to set up a server myself. I want to:
>>
>> * show highways more with the colours used on Michelin maps
>> * show a bicycle map as three overlays (transparent, with a possibility
>> to switch them on and off)
>> * show bus routes for each bus separately as overlays (transparent 
>> layers)
>>
>> 1. Is this possible?
>
> Yes
Great.
>
>> 2. What do I need? PostgreSQL? Python? What else?
>
> See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mapnik
It's rather short. Is it really that simple...? How often is the planet 
file generated? Say I would like to have daily updates instead of 
weekly. Is that possible? I guess I should just try it...
>
>> 3. What kind of server would be good for this? Would an AMD64 with one
>> core be able to do this? Do I need more cores? Does 64 bit processing
>> help? Or would I be just as well off with a Core2Duo or even a 
>> Pentium 4?
>
> Any recent processor is fine, obviously the faster the core(s) the 
> more tiles you can render in a given time.
So an AMD64 would be OK then.
>
>> 4. For the disks I was considering to set up a RAID1 mirror with 2 disks
>> of 750 GB. I guess that would be sufficient?
>
> How much storage you need depends on how much of the world you would 
> like to render and to what zoom level.
>
> I render the whole UK to level 5 and just Wales to zoom 16, this uses 
> a mere 450MB
>
> In my experience each zoom level is roughly 2.5x bigger (in terms of 
> disk space) than the previous.
>
> Unless your planning to serve the whole world, to hundreds of clients 
> at a time (which your connection info below suggests your not) RAID1 
> is massive overkill! The regularly requested tiles will get cached in 
> memory anyway further reducing the disk speed requirements.
I'm not sure if I want the whole world. I do want to render Belgium and 
probably a good part of mainland Europe. The server would also be used 
for my own purposes. Firewall, OpenLDAP, Postfix, HTTP, Proxy server, 
Asterisk, maybe MythTV, LTSP, Nagios. I simply feel more comfortable 
with a RAID1 setup. I wouldn't mind it uses spare cycles to render a map.
>
> I serve (pre-rendered) tiles from a NSLU2* running Debian with a USB 
> stick for storage. This setup quite happily serves ~150 tiles per second.
>
> *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2
>
>> I would like to do this from 'home' with a connection that has a fixed
>> IP address and 1 or 2 Mbps upload. I'll probably be shaping the traffic
>> to limit it and make my own internet connection still usable.
>
> With a 2 Mbps upload you should be able to serve about 40 tiles per second
That should be enough. I'll probably shape it down to 700kbps then.

Polyglot