[postgis-users] Linux installation

Fri Nov 11 12:54:43 PST 2011

Hi Steve,

I figure I'll give you the long version :-)

We use SLES 11 at work (NIWA, New Zealand) for several servers running postgis/mapserver/etc. The public web mapping portal at http://www.os2020.org.nz has most of it's map layers served from a SLES VM running postgis/mapserver. (The slow layers are served from Arc Server :-)
This was just updated by our IT support team. was down for several minutes for the update & then back online as it should be. No issues, from a server perspective. The Geonetwork metadata catalogue on this site is run under Tomcat on another SLES VM, the actual catalogue data is on a remote SLES Postgres server (in a different city in fact). 

We have just (yesterday) built a new VM for a contractor to develop a web mapping app on. Standard SLES 11 install, recent enough versions for everything (incl GDAL 1.8 which I need to capture WFS layers to local datasets).

So I can honestly say we use SLES widely for such things & have done for several years... but seldom a need for latest versions of applications.

I have used SLES, OpenSuse, Ubuntu & Debian. All have very good support for GIS related applications. I haven't tried it, but I understand Fedora does also.

As far as SLES goes, I have had very few issues. Support is excellent in my experience, where I have contacted package maintainers for an old or later version of something (like an earlier version of mapserver to avoid dependency issues) and they have always responded promptly and been able to help.

I find the users of any particular distro will always think their's is best, otherwise they wouldn't be using it :-) I tend to more pragmatic & have used several, whichever makes it easier to set up a GIS/web mapping workstation/server at the time... pretty promiscuous from that perspective.

Debian is probably best if you really know Linux. I find it more techo than some of the other distros, and more difficult to set up & use. But very stable & reliable once you wrestle through it.

SLES works fine. Work has the licences, I use OpenSUSE elsewhere. No problems with either to date, for several years now. 

Ubuntu offers most of the Debian advantages plus (IMHO) better online support, and with both stable & unstable GIS repositories, perhaps the most up to date support version wise. But unstable is that, & there are dependency conflicts occasionally. Getting recent versions of Postgis, postgres & mapserver working a year or so ago involved some private repositories as the public ones didn't work. But those repositories were there & helped make it hang together. OK for a desktop, but for a server, bleeding edge versions are generally less of an issue. OpenSUSE got it right much faster.

I used OpenSUSE 9 & 10.x for some years, then Ubuntu for the last two or three. I've just set up OpenSuse 11.4, & now prefer it to the current Ubuntu versions for ease of use setting up & running GIS tools. I'm having some problems with OpenSUSE RC 12.1, but this is still an RC version, so until it is released, I'm not complaining :-)

So they will all work, and distros alternate as to which has the most current versions of various packages available as a stable one. With the OpenSUSE package builder, it is perhaps the easiest distro to roll your own packages for SLE11 if you ever need to. 

Given other respondents have identified version currency as an issue, I suggest you spend a couple of minutes looking at the repositories to see the difference, bearing in mind that in 6 months the situation could be reversed :-)

HTH,

  Brent Wood

--- On Sat, 11/12/11, Mathieu Basille <basille at ase-research.org> wrote:

> From: Mathieu Basille <basille at ase-research.org>
> Subject: Re: [postgis-users] Linux installation
> To: postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
> Date: Saturday, November 12, 2011, 2:33 AM
> Dear Steve,
> 
> As a complement to what Paolo said: I don't know about
> other distros, and I'll talk only about Debian which I use
> on a daily basis. A fresh Debian install (stable or testing
> or even sid) is not up-to-date in terms of GIS packages.
> Examples:
> 
> - QGIS: last release is 1.7; Debian only provides 1.4 in
> all flavours of Debian;
> - GDAL: last release is 1.8.1; Debian provides 1.6 for
> stable, 1.7 for testing, and 1.8 for experimental, which is
> hardly installable due to dependency troubles (but they are
> working on it).
> 
> I don't mean that Debian is a bad choice... Especially
> since I'm using it as my primary platform! It is indeed very
> good for many reasons. But if you want cutting-edge GIS
> tools, you'll need to tweak Debian a bit. For example, you
> can find how to install most recent QGIS versions here: http://www.qgis.org/wiki/DownloadFr#Debian
> 
> Back to PostGIS now. If you want the latest stable release,
> which is 1.5.3, a simple
> 
> [sudo] aptitude install postgis
> 
> under testing should do the trick. If you want to run
> stable (which is a good choice), you can use some
> apt-pinning to be able to install packages from testing, or
> you can use PostGIS 1.5.2 with the previous command line.
> 
> If you're interested in the development version, i.e.
> PostGIS 2.0 with raster support, it'll be slightly more
> complicated to have a complete GIS platform (but not
> impossible I guess). For instance, you'll need to compile
> everything by hand from GDAL 1.8 to PostGIS 2.0 through
> QGIS... But in this case, there is no GIS-related reason to
> use Debian: compilation should be the same under any Linux
> distro, so just pick up the one you like (or the one for
> which you have people to help you around).
> 
> Hope this helps,
> Mathieu.
> 
> 
> Le 11/11/2011 04:19, Paolo Cavallini a écrit :
> > Il 10/11/2011 17:41, Steve.Toutant at inspq.qc.ca
> ha scritto:
> >> Hi,
> >> Sorry for cross-posting on several lists, but we
> are in the process of
> >> taking some important decisions, on the OS to
> use...
> >> For several years we have mapserver, gdal and
> Postgis, etc... running
> >> on a Windows server.
> >> We plan to migrate our GIS tools from the Windows
> server to SUSE Linux
> >> Enterprise Server 11.
> >> I heard bad comments on using SLES with mapserver,
> postgres/postgis,
> >> gdal, etc...Taht the installation of these tools
> was a pain compare to
> >> OpenSUSE or UBUNTU.
> >> Comments on using and maintaining GIS
> infrastructure with SLES 11
> >> would be very appreciated.
> >> 
> > Hi all.
> > I think having GIS packages ready and updated is the
> most important
> > thing in choosing a Linux distro. Debian should be the
> best, as it is
> > updated and wdely used and tested.
> > All the best.
> > 
> > --
> > Paolo Cavallini
> > See:http://www.faunalia.it/pc
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > This body part will be downloaded on demand.
> 
> -- 
> ~$ whoami
> Mathieu Basille, Post-Doc
> 
> ~$ locate
> Laboratoire d'Écologie Comportementale et de Conservation
> de la Faune
> + Centre d'Étude de la Forêt
> Département de Biologie
> Université Laval, Québec
> 
> ~$ info
> http://ase-research.org/basille
> 
> ~$ fortune
> ``If you can't win by reason, go for volume.''
> Calvin, by Bill Watterson.
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