1 # Importing 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 `.env`
10 The Nominatim server can be customized via a `.env` in the build directory.
11 This is a file in [dotenv](https://symfony.com/doc/4.3/components/dotenv.html) format
12 which looks the same as variable settings in a standard shell environment.
13 You can also set the same configuration via environment variables. All
14 settings have a `NOMINATIM_` prefix to avoid conflicts with other environment
17 There are lots of configuration settings you can tweak. Have a look
18 at `settings/env.default` for a full list. Most should have a sensible default.
22 If you plan to import a large dataset (e.g. Europe, North America, planet),
23 you should also enable flatnode storage of node locations. With this
24 setting enabled, node coordinates are stored in a simple file instead
25 of the database. This will save you import time and disk storage.
28 NOMINATIM_FLATNODE_FILE="/path/to/flatnode.file"
30 Replace the second part with a suitable path on your system and make sure
31 the directory exists. There should be at least 75GB of free space.
33 ## Downloading additional data
35 ### Wikipedia/Wikidata rankings
37 Wikipedia can be used as an optional auxiliary data source to help indicate
38 the importance of OSM features. Nominatim will work without this information
39 but it will improve the quality of the results if this is installed.
40 This data is available as a binary download:
42 cd $NOMINATIM_SOURCE_DIR/data
43 wget https://www.nominatim.org/data/wikimedia-importance.sql.gz
45 The file is about 400MB and adds around 4GB to the Nominatim database.
48 If you forgot to download the wikipedia rankings, you can also add
49 importances after the import. Download the files, then run
50 `./utils/setup.php --import-wikipedia-articles`
51 and `./utils/update.php --recompute-importance`.
53 ### Great Britain, USA postcodes
55 Nominatim can use postcodes from an external source to improve searches that
56 involve a GB or US 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
60 wget https://www.nominatim.org/data/us_postcode_data.sql.gz
62 ## Choosing the data to import
64 In its default setup Nominatim is configured to import the full OSM data
65 set for the entire planet. Such a setup requires a powerful machine with
66 at least 64GB of RAM and around 900GB of SSD hard disks. Depending on your
67 use case there are various ways to reduce the amount of data imported. This
68 section discusses these methods. They can also be combined.
72 If you only need geocoding for a smaller region, then precomputed OSM extracts
73 are a good way to reduce the database size and import time.
74 [Geofabrik](https://download.geofabrik.de) offers extracts for most countries.
75 They even have daily updates which can be used with the update process described
76 [in the next section](../Update). There are also
77 [other providers for extracts](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#Downloading).
79 Please be aware that some extracts are not cut exactly along the country
80 boundaries. As a result some parts of the boundary may be missing which means
81 that Nominatim cannot compute the areas for some administrative areas.
83 ### Dropping Data Required for Dynamic Updates
85 About half of the data in Nominatim's database is not really used for serving
86 the API. It is only there to allow the data to be updated from the latest
87 changes from OSM. For many uses these dynamic updates are not really required.
88 If you don't plan to apply updates, the dynamic part of the database can be
89 safely dropped using the following command:
92 ./utils/setup.php --drop
95 Note that you still need to provide for sufficient disk space for the initial
96 import. So this option is particularly interesting if you plan to transfer the
97 database or reuse the space later.
99 ### Reverse-only Imports
101 If you only want to use the Nominatim database for reverse lookups or
102 if you plan to use the installation only for exports to a
103 [photon](https://photon.komoot.de/) database, then you can set up a database
104 without search indexes. Add `--reverse-only` to your setup command above.
106 This saves about 5% of disk space.
108 ### Filtering Imported Data
110 Nominatim normally sets up a full search database containing administrative
111 boundaries, places, streets, addresses and POI data. There are also other
112 import styles available which only read selected data:
114 * **settings/import-admin.style**
115 Only import administrative boundaries and places.
116 * **settings/import-street.style**
117 Like the admin style but also adds streets.
118 * **settings/import-address.style**
119 Import all data necessary to compute addresses down to house number level.
120 * **settings/import-full.style**
121 Default style that also includes points of interest.
122 * **settings/import-extratags.style**
123 Like the full style but also adds most of the OSM tags into the extratags
126 The style can be changed with the configuration `NOMINATIM_IMPORT_STYLE`.
128 To give you an idea of the impact of using the different styles, the table
129 below gives rough estimates of the final database size after import of a
130 2020 planet and after using the `--drop` option. It also shows the time
131 needed for the import on a machine with 64GB RAM, 4 CPUS and NVME disks.
132 Note that the given sizes are just an estimate meant for comparison of
133 style requirements. Your planet import is likely to be larger as the
134 OSM data grows with time.
136 style | Import time | DB size | after drop
137 ----------|--------------|------------|------------
138 admin | 4h | 215 GB | 20 GB
139 street | 22h | 440 GB | 185 GB
140 address | 36h | 545 GB | 260 GB
141 full | 54h | 640 GB | 330 GB
142 extratags | 54h | 650 GB | 340 GB
144 You can also customize the styles further.
145 A [description of the style format](../develop/Import.md#configuring-the-import)
146 can be found in the development section.
148 ## Initial import of the data
150 !!! danger "Important"
151 First try the import with a small extract, for example from
152 [Geofabrik](https://download.geofabrik.de).
154 Download the data to import. Then issue the following command
155 from the **build directory** to start the import:
158 ./utils/setup.php --osm-file <data file> --all 2>&1 | tee setup.log
161 ### Notes on full planet imports
163 Even on a perfectly configured machine
164 the import of a full planet takes around 2 days. Once you see messages
165 with `Rank .. ETA` appear, the indexing process has started. This part takes
166 the most time. There are 30 ranks to process. Rank 26 and 30 are the most complex.
167 They take each about a third of the total import time. If you have not reached
168 rank 26 after two days of import, it is worth revisiting your system
169 configuration as it may not be optimal for the import.
171 ### Notes on memory usage
173 In the first step of the import Nominatim uses [osm2pgsql](https://osm2pgsql.org)
174 to load the OSM data into the PostgreSQL database. This step is very demanding
175 in terms of RAM usage. osm2pgsql and PostgreSQL are running in parallel at
176 this point. PostgreSQL blocks at least the part of RAM that has been configured
177 with the `shared_buffers` parameter during
178 [PostgreSQL tuning](Installation#postgresql-tuning)
179 and needs some memory on top of that. osm2pgsql needs at least 2GB of RAM for
180 its internal data structures, potentially more when it has to process very large
181 relations. In addition it needs to maintain a cache for node locations. The size
182 of this cache can be configured with the parameter `--osm2pgsql-cache`.
184 When importing with a flatnode file, it is best to disable the node cache
185 completely and leave the memory for the flatnode file. Nominatim will do this
186 by default, so you do not need to configure anything in this case.
188 For imports without a flatnode file, set `--osm2pgsql-cache` approximately to
189 the size of the OSM pbf file you are importing. The size needs to be given in
190 MB. Make sure you leave enough RAM for PostgreSQL and osm2pgsql as mentioned
191 above. If the system starts swapping or you are getting out-of-memory errors,
192 reduce the cache size or even consider using a flatnode file.
194 ### Verify the import
196 Run this script to verify all required tables and indices got created successfully.
199 ./utils/check_import_finished.php
202 ### Setting up the website
204 Run the following command to set up the configuration file for the API frontend
205 `settings/settings-frontend.php`. These settings are used in website/*.php files.
208 ./utils/setup.php --setup-website
211 This step is not necessary if you use `--all` option while setting up the DB.
213 Now you can try out your installation by running:
219 This runs a small test server normally used for development. You can use it
220 to verify that your installation is working. Go to
221 `http://localhost:8088/status.php` and you should see the message `OK`.
222 You can also run a search query, e.g. `http://localhost:8088/search.php?q=Berlin`.
224 To run Nominatim via webservers like Apache or nginx, please read the
225 [Deployment chapter](Deployment.md).
227 ## Tuning the database
229 Accurate word frequency information for search terms helps PostgreSQL's query
230 planner to make the right decisions. Recomputing them can improve the performance
231 of forward geocoding in particular under high load. To recompute word counts run:
234 ./utils/update.php --recompute-word-counts
237 This will take a couple of hours for a full planet installation. You can
238 also defer that step to a later point in time when you realise that
239 performance becomes an issue. Just make sure that updates are stopped before
240 running this function.
242 If you want to be able to search for places by their type through
243 [special key phrases](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nominatim/Special_Phrases)
244 you also need to enable these key phrases like this:
246 ./utils/specialphrases.php --wiki-import > specialphrases.sql
247 psql -d nominatim -f specialphrases.sql
249 Note that this command downloads the phrases from the wiki link above. You
250 need internet access for the step.
253 ## Installing Tiger housenumber data for the US
255 Nominatim is able to use the official [TIGER](https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.html)
256 address set to complement the OSM house number data in the US. You can add
257 TIGER data to your own Nominatim instance by following these steps. The
258 entire US adds about 10GB to your database.
260 1. Get preprocessed TIGER 2019 data and unpack it into the
261 data directory in your Nominatim sources:
264 wget https://nominatim.org/data/tiger2019-nominatim-preprocessed.tar.gz
265 tar xf tiger2019-nominatim-preprocessed.tar.gz
267 2. Import the data into your Nominatim database:
269 ./utils/setup.php --import-tiger-data
271 3. Enable use of the Tiger data in your `.env` by adding:
273 NOMINATIM_USE_US_TIGER_DATA=yes
275 4. Apply the new settings:
278 ./utils/setup.php --create-functions --enable-diff-updates --create-partition-functions
282 See the [developer's guide](../develop/data-sources.md#us-census-tiger) for more
283 information on how the data got preprocessed.