[mapserver-users] really huge maps / MAXSIZE

[Rahkonen Jukka (Tike)]

Lars Lingner wrote:
 
> Hello MapServer users,
> 
> with the MAXSIZE parameter I can limit the output size. Does the value depend
> only on the available memory? When I set it to high, MapServer is crashing.
> 
> I was wondering if there is an option to force MapServer to use an additional
> (slow) memory like a hard disk to make sure the rendering size doesn't matter.
> 
> An other solution would be to write a script which splits a render request into
> smaller ones and stitches the results together. That would be independent from
> MapServer.
> 
> With really huge maps I mean more than 50000 pixel. With 32GB I can manage
> up to 40000 pixel.
> 
> Is anyone else running MapServer at its pixel limit? How do you handle it?

With gdal_translate and GDAL WMS driver http://www.gdal.org/frmt_wms.html.

You can set a reasonable block size in the XML config file and gdal_translate does the rest automatically for you. By making smaller request you will probably get the total huge output faster but it is easy to play with blocksize  and stopwatch and see how it really behaves in your environment.

-Jukka Rahkonen-