1 # Importing and Updating the Database
3 The following instructions explain how to create a Nominatim database
4 from an OSM planet file and how to keep the database up to date. It
5 is assumed that you have already successfully installed the Nominatim
6 software itself, if not return to the [installation page](Installation.md).
8 ## Configuration setup in settings/local.php
10 The Nominatim server can be customized via the file `settings/local.php`
11 in the build directory. Note that this is a PHP file, so it must always
16 without any leading spaces.
18 There are lots of configuration settings you can tweak. Have a look
19 at `settings/default.php` for a full list. Most should have a sensible default.
23 If you plan to import a large dataset (e.g. Europe, North America, planet),
24 you should also enable flatnode storage of node locations. With this
25 setting enabled, node coordinates are stored in a simple file instead
26 of the database. This will save you import time and disk storage.
27 Add to your `settings/local.php`:
29 @define('CONST_Osm2pgsql_Flatnode_File', '/path/to/flatnode.file');
31 Replace the second part with a suitable path on your system and make sure
32 the directory exists. There should be at least 40GB of free space.
34 ## Downloading additional data
36 ### Wikipedia rankings
38 Wikipedia can be used as an optional auxiliary data source to help indicate
39 the importance of osm features. Nominatim will work without this information
40 but it will improve the quality of the results if this is installed.
41 This data is available as a binary download:
43 cd $NOMINATIM_SOURCE_DIR/data
44 wget https://www.nominatim.org/data/wikipedia_article.sql.bin
45 wget https://www.nominatim.org/data/wikipedia_redirect.sql.bin
47 Combined the 2 files are around 1.5GB and add around 30GB to the install
48 size of nominatim. They also increase the install time by an hour or so.
50 *NOTE:* you'll need to download the Wikipedia rankings before performing
51 the initial import of the data if you want the rankings applied to the
56 Nominatim can use postcodes from an external source to improve searches that involve a UK postcode. This data can be optionally downloaded:
58 cd $NOMINATIM_SOURCE_DIR/data
59 wget https://www.nominatim.org/data/gb_postcode_data.sql.gz
61 ## Choosing the Data to Import
63 In its default setup, Nominatim is configured to import the full OSM data
64 set for the entire planet. Such a setup requires a powerful machine with
65 at least 32GB of RAM and around 800GB of SSD hard disks. Depending on your
66 use case there are various ways to reduce the amount of data imported. This
67 section discusses these methods. They can also be combined.
71 If you only need geocoding for a smaller region, then precomputed extracts
72 are a good way to reduce the database size.
73 [Geofabrik](https://download.geofabrik.de) offers extracts for most countries
74 and also daily updates which can be used with the update process described
76 [other providers for extracts](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#Downloading)
78 Please be aware that some extracts are not exactly cut along the country
79 boundaries. As a result some parts of the boundary may be missing and
80 Nominatim cannot compute the areas as a result.
82 ### Reverse-only Imports
84 If you only want to use the Nominatim database for reverse lookups or
85 if you plan to use the installation only for exports to a
86 [photon](http://photon.komoot.de/) database, then you can set up a database
87 without search indexes. Add `--reverse-only` to your setup command above.
89 This saves about 5% of disk space.
91 ### Filtering Imported Data
93 Nominatim normally sets up a full search database containing administrative
94 boundaries, places, streets, addresses and POI data. There are also other
95 import styles available which only read selected data:
99 style Import time DB size after drop
100 admin 5h 189 GB 20 GB
105 You can also customize the styles further. For an description of the
106 style format see [the developement section](../develop/Import.md).
108 ## Initial import of the data
110 **Important:** first try the import with a small extract, for example from
111 [Geofabrik](https://download.geofabrik.de).
113 Download the data to import and load the data with the following command:
116 ./utils/setup.php --osm-file <data file> --all [--osm2pgsql-cache 28000] 2>&1 | tee setup.log
119 The `--osm2pgsql-cache` parameter is optional but strongly recommended for
120 planet imports. It sets the node cache size for the osm2pgsql import part
121 (see `-C` parameter in osm2pgsql help). As a rule of thumb, this should be
122 about the same size as the file you are importing but never more than
123 2/3 of RAM available. If your machine starts swapping reduce the size.
125 Computing word frequency for search terms can improve the performance of
126 forward geocoding in particular under high load as it helps Postgres' query
127 planner to make the right decisions. To recompute word counts run:
130 ./utils/update.php --recompute-word-counts
133 This will take a couple of hours for a full planet installation. You can
134 also defer that step to a later point in time when you realise that
135 performance becomes an issue. Just make sure that updates are stopped before
136 running this function.
138 If you want to be able to search for places by their type through
139 [special key phrases](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim/Special_Phrases)
140 you also need to enable these key phrases like this:
142 ./utils/specialphrases.php --wiki-import > specialphrases.sql
143 psql -d nominatim -f specialphrases.sql
145 Note that this command downloads the phrases from the wiki link above.
148 ## Installing Tiger housenumber data for the US
150 Nominatim is able to use the official [TIGER](https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html)
151 address set to complement the OSM house number data in the US. You can add
152 TIGER data to your own Nominatim instance by following these steps. The
153 entire US adds about 10GB to your database.
155 1. Get preprocessed TIGER 2018 data and unpack it into the
156 data directory in your Nominatim sources:
159 wget https://nominatim.org/data/tiger2018-nominatim-preprocessed.tar.gz
160 tar xf tiger2018-nominatim-preprocessed.tar.gz
162 `data-source/us-tiger/README.md` explains how the data got preprocessed.
164 2. Import the data into your Nominatim database:
166 ./utils/setup.php --import-tiger-data
168 3. Enable use of the Tiger data in your `settings/local.php` by adding:
170 @define('CONST_Use_US_Tiger_Data', true);
172 4. Apply the new settings:
175 ./utils/setup.php --create-functions --enable-diff-updates --create-partition-functions
181 There are many different possibilities to update your Nominatim database.
182 The following section describes how to keep it up-to-date with Pyosmium.
183 For a list of other methods see the output of `./utils/update.php --help`.
185 #### Installing the newest version of Pyosmium
187 It is recommended to install Pyosmium via pip. Run (as the same user who
188 will later run the updates):
191 pip install --user osmium
194 Nominatim needs a tool called `pyosmium-get-updates`, which comes with
195 Pyosmium. You need to tell Nominatim where to find it. Add the
196 following line to your `settings/local.php`:
198 @define('CONST_Pyosmium_Binary', '/home/user/.local/bin/pyosmium-get-changes');
200 The path above is fine if you used the `--user` parameter with pip.
201 Replace `user` with your user name.
203 #### Setting up the update process
205 Next the update needs to be initialised. By default Nominatim is configured
206 to update using the global minutely diffs.
208 If you want a different update source you will need to add some settings
209 to `settings/local.php`. For example, to use the daily country extracts
210 diffs for Ireland from geofabrik add the following:
212 // base URL of the replication service
213 @define('CONST_Replication_Url', 'https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/ireland-and-northern-ireland-updates');
214 // How often upstream publishes diffs
215 @define('CONST_Replication_Update_Interval', '86400');
216 // How long to sleep if no update found yet
217 @define('CONST_Replication_Recheck_Interval', '900');
219 To set up the update process now run the following command:
221 ./utils/update.php --init-updates
223 It outputs the date where updates will start. Recheck that this date is
226 The --init-updates command needs to be rerun whenever the replication service
229 #### Updating Nominatim
231 The following command will keep your database constantly up to date:
233 ./utils/update.php --import-osmosis-all
235 (Note that even though the old name "import-osmosis-all" has been kept for compatibility reasons, Osmosis is not required to run this - it uses pyosmium behind the scenes.)
237 If you have imported multiple country extracts and want to keep them
238 up-to-date, have a look at the script in
239 [issue #60](https://github.com/openstreetmap/Nominatim/issues/60).