[Qgis-user] QGIS Mapserver - Project administration and updates, documentation

[Albin Blaschka]

Hello all,

Following an update on my Linux-Server (Ubuntu), where I have an 
instance of qgis mapserver running, I stumbled upon a small gotcha - it 
stopped working.

The reason was simple: The binary of qgis_mapserv.fcgi got updated, but 
when I set up qgis mapserver, I followed the suggestion as described under

https://docs.qgis.org/2.18/en/docs/user_manual/working_with_ogc/server/getting_started.html#installation

under the heading "Server the project" to put a project into a separate 
directory with the .qgs file and a *Copy* of qgis_mapserv.fcgi


After the update this *copy* of the binary could not find the right 
shared library anymore (the update replaced libqgis_gui.so.2.18.14 with 
libqgis_gui.so.2.18.15, to be specific).

To avoid this problem in the future with the next update, I replaced the 
*copy* of the mapserver-binary with a soft link to the installed, 
original qgis_mapserv.fcgi

So: The state after a clean installation under Ubuntu is:

/usr/lib/cgi-bin/qgis_mapserv.fcgi

Following the recommendation of the documentation, which is a good one! 
You have:

/usr/lib/cgi-bin/qgis_mapserv.fcgi

and your project-dir(s) for example

/usr/lib/cgi-bin/myproject/

So, on the console you go into your project dir and instead to copy the 
qgis_mapserv.fcgi you add a soft-link:

cd myproject

ln -s ../qgis_mapserv.fcgi .


I do not know if this is an "old hat", and it was only me who had this 
problem, but nevertheless I would like to suggest a small change to the 
documentation, to avoid this in future, at least for some people, like me...

All the best,

Albin

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