How to Use MR.SID raster files in mapserver 4.4.2 ?

[Arnulf Christl]

Brent Fraser wrote:
> Robert,
>  
>   It is possible to use MrSID files as a data source for MapServer.  
> Personally, I don't recommend it due to the poor decompression 
> performance of MrSID.  If you have the disk space convert the MrSID 
> files to uncompressed TIF instead (you can use GDAL's gdal_translate 
> utility).  If disk space is not available use ECW (although I'm not sure 
> of the compilation status on unix).
>  
>   What do you get when you run GDAL's gdalinfo utility on the MrSID file?
>  
> Brent Fraser

Hi,
Frank did some changes to GDAL (was it that) and it should work fine 
now. Get me offlist, if you need exact version numbers.
You simply have to download the Mr.Sid SDK at www.lizardtech.com and 
compile it with Mapserver. Nothing more. Well! We had to do it for Linux 
and Windows, latter is a pain.

Since Franks hack the performance really is very amazing. Being all 
Free-headed i personally would not want to use Mr.Sid but it really does 
a great job compressing and decompressing. The aerials of Rhineland 
Palatinate would have been 1.8 TB in TIFF, instead they now amount to 60 
GB Mr.Sid. The customer made us do it.

>     ----- Original Message -----
>     *From:* Robert oude Lohuis <mailto:OudelohuisR at VERTIS.NL>
>     *To:* MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
>     <mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU>
>     *Sent:* Thursday, June 02, 2005 6:32 AM
>     *Subject:* [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] How to Use MR.SID raster files in
>     mapserver 4.4.2 ?
> 
> 
>     Hello,
> 
>     We have compiled version 4.4.2 of mapserver (and the necessary
>     libraries) from the sources on a unix box.
>     It is now configured and working. There is however one problem.
>     We have a couple of Mr. SID files and want to use these as a layer.
>     We downloaded the libraries from lizardtech and recompiled GDAL with
>     support for Mr.SID
> 
>     We did tiled the Mr. SID files and configured a layer. There are no
>     error messages, but I see no data in the map.
>     We tried to look at an individual Mr. SID file, but then we got the
>     following error :
> 
>     MrSIDRasterBand::IRasterIO(): Failed to load image. scene
>     magnifGDALRasterIO() failed: drawGDAL(): Unable to access file.
>     GDALRasterIO() failed: drawGDAL()
> 
>     A recompile of mapserver had no effect.
> 
>     The first question is: Is it possible to look at Mr.SID rasters
>     through mapserver ?
>     And the second question is, if so,  what's the trick ?
> 
>     Does anyone have knowledge on this subject and willing to share
>     his/her information ?
> 
>     Thanks in advance,
> 
>     Robert oude Lohuis
>