14.3.1. Installation

NextGIS Web is modular software and this instruction covers only installation of the core package called nextgisweb. Other packages, such as nextgisweb_qgis and nextgisweb_mapserver can require additional steps to install.

14.3.1.1. System requirements

• Modern Linux distribution like Ubuntu Linux 20.04:

  • We expect that NextGIS Web can be installed on most modern Linux distributions. But we run it under LTS-version Ubuntu Linux, and this instruction was tested on Ubuntu Linux 20.04.

  • We don’t provide community support for running NextGIS Web on other distributions. So if you any installation-related issue, please try to reproduce a problem on Ubuntu Linux 20.04 before you report them.

• Python >= 3.8.

• GDAL >= 3.

• Node.js 20.x or higher and Yarn 1.x package manager. We recommend using NodeSource and Yarn package repositories.

• PostgreSQL database with PostGIS and hstore extensions enabled:

  • The minimum required versions are PostgreSQL 10 and PostGIS 2.5.

  • PostgreSQL user must be owner of database and PostGIS system tables spatial_ref_sys, geography_columns, geometry_columns, raster_columns and raster_overviews.

  • PostgreSQL database shouldn’t be used by other software or for other purposes. NextGIS Web modifies spatial_ref_sys table and attaches some triggers on it.

  • PostgreSQL and PostGIS installation is out-of-scope for this instruction. But for testing purpose you can use snippet bellow to install PostgreSQL and PostGIS on Ubuntu Linux 20.04 as root user:

    # apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib postgis
    # su postgres -c psql
    postgres=# CREATE ROLE nextgisweb LOGIN PASSWORD 'changeme';
    postgres=# CREATE DATABASE nextgisweb OWNER nextgisweb
    postgres-# ENCODING 'UTF-8' LC_COLLATE 'C.UTF-8' LC_CTYPE 'C.UTF-8';
    postgres=# \connect nextgisweb
    nextgisweb=# CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
    nextgisweb=# ALTER TABLE spatial_ref_sys OWNER TO nextgisweb;
    nextgisweb=# ALTER TABLE geography_columns OWNER TO nextgisweb;
    nextgisweb=# ALTER TABLE geometry_columns OWNER TO nextgisweb;
    nextgisweb=# CREATE EXTENSION hstore;
    nextgisweb=# \quit
    

    Now you can connect nextgisweb database on localhost with nextgisweb username and changeme password.

• Hardware requirements very depend on amount of data and usage, but we recommend start from 4 vCPU, 8GB RAM and 250GB HDD (but SSD is much better).

14.3.1.2. Installation process

First you need to install required packages:

# apt install curl git
# curl --silent https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource-repo.gpg.key | apt-key add -
# add-apt-repository --yes --no-update "deb https://deb.nodesource.com/node_20.x nodistro main"
# curl --silent https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | apt-key add -
# add-apt-repository --yes --no-update "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main"
# apt update
# apt install python3 python3-dev python3-virtualenv
# apt install build-essential libssl-dev libgdal-dev libgeos-dev \
  gdal-bin libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev zlib1g-dev libjpeg-turbo8-dev \
  postgresql-client libmagic-dev nodejs yarn

It’s recommended to use separate user (ngw for example) for NextGIS Web installation. So let’s create it:

# useradd --create-home --home-dir /srv/ngw --shell /bin/bash ngw

Now you can login with this user and go to home (/srv/ngw) directory:

# su ngw
$ cd

All commands given bellow with $ command prompt should be executed under ngw user.

Now create a virtualenv directory and activate virtualenv:

$ virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 env
$ . env/bin/activate

Create a package directory and clone NextGIS Web repository here:

$ mkdir package
$ cd package
$ git clone https://github.com/nextgis/nextgisweb.git

Keep in mind that master default branch is development and unstable. So if you are going to install NextGIS Web in production environment you should use the latest tagged version:

$ cd nextgisweb
$ git checkout $(git tag -l '*.*.*' | tail -1)
$ git describe --tags
4.3.2
$ cd ..

Now install nextgisweb python package into virtualenv in editable mode and compile i18n translations:

$ export SETUPTOOLS_ENABLE_FEATURES=legacy-editable
$ pip install -e nextgisweb/
$ nextgisweb-i18n -p nextgisweb compile

Additional NextGIS Web packages such as nextgisweb_qgis or nextgisweb_mapserver should be installed into virtualenv here. But they can have additional system requirements.

Now go to the home directory and create directory structure:

$ cd
$ mkdir config data

Create config/config.ini with following contents:

Listing 14.5. File config/config.ini

[core]

# Database connection settings
database.host = [database host]
database.name = [database name]
database.user = [database user]
database.password = [database password]

# File system storage settings
sdir = /srv/ngw/data

# To use Russian translation by default uncomment following line
# locale.default = ru

Then set up NEXTGISWEB_CONFIG environment variable which points to NextGIS Web configuration file (instructions about persistent setting are given at the end of this section):

$ export NEXTGISWEB_CONFIG=/srv/ngw/config/config.ini

After that, set up Node.js and Yarn project environment with workspaces, and build necessary files:

$ nextgisweb jsrealm install
$ mkdir dist
$ yarn run build

Now you should initialize database structure with the following command:

$ nextgisweb initialize_db

After that, you can run builtin HTTP server:

$ nextgisweb server

Check that your web browser can open http://localhost:8080, and then log in using the default username administrator with password admin. Then press Ctrl + C to halt HTTP server. NextGIS Web is installed and should work properly, but builtin HTTP server is not suitable for production purposes.

You may also check nextgisweb maintenance command, which is required to run periodically. This command cleans up unused data, such as old file uploads.

$ nextgisweb maintenance

To simplify subsequent steps add virtualenv initialization to .bashrc file for ngw user:

$ echo ". ~/env/bin/activate" >> ~/.bashrc
$ echo "export NEXTGISWEB_CONFIG=~/config/config.ini" >> ~/.bashrc

14.3.1.3. uWSGI

You can use NextGIS Web with any other WSGI-server like gunicorn but we use uWSGI in most of deployments. So install to the virtualenv:

$ pip install uwsgi

Then create config/uwsgi.ini with following contents:

Listing 14.6. File config/uwsgi.ini

[uwsgi]
http = 0.0.0.0:8080
master = true
processes = 4
lazy-apps = true
enable-threads = true
paste = config:%p
env = NEXTGISWEB_CONFIG=%d/config.ini

[app:main]
use = egg:nextgisweb

And run uWSGI web server:

$ uwsgi --ini config/uwsgi.ini

Now you should be able to connect http://localhost:8080/ with your web browser. Then press Ctrl + C to halt HTTP server. Complete setup of uWSGI for real world production usage is subject for a separate article, so read uWSGI documentation.

14.3.1.4. Systemd

To start NextGIS Web with your system you can use systemd-service. Under root create service file /etc/systemd/system/ngw.service with the following contents:

Listing 14.7. File /etc/systemd/system/ngw.service

[Unit]
Requires=network.target
After=network.target

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/srv/ngw
ExecStart=/srv/ngw/env/bin/uwsgi --ini config/uwsgi.ini
User=ngw
Group=ngw
Restart=on-failure
KillSignal=SIGQUIT
Type=notify
NotifyAccess=all

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Also, you may want to periodic execution of nextgisweb maintenance. To achieve this, create service (/etc/systemd/system/ngw-maintenance.service) and timer (/etc/systemd/system/ngw-maintenance.timer) files:

Listing 14.8. File /etc/systemd/system/ngw-maintenance.service

[Unit]
Description=NextGIS Web maintenance task
Wants=ngw-maintenance.timer

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/srv/ngw
Environment="NEXTGISWEB_CONFIG=/srv/ngw/config/config.ini"
ExecStart=/srv/ngw/env/bin/nextgisweb maintenance
User=ngw
Group=ngw

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Listing 14.9. File /etc/systemd/system/ngw-maintenance.service

[Unit]
Description=NextGIS Web maintenance timer
Requires=ngw-maintenance.service

[Timer]
OnCalendar=Mon *-*-* 00:30:00
Unit=ngw-maintenance.service

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then reload systemd configuration, enable and start service and timer:

# systemctl daemon-reload
# systemctl enable ngw.service ngw-maintenance.timer
# systemctl start ngw.service ngw-maintenance.timer

Now NextGIS Web will start with your system.