MapServer on Debian GNU/Linux

MapServer Debian Package

MapServer 4.0.1 is installable directly as a debian package via apt-get on Debian Woody (and above). The package can be installed by adding the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

• deb ​http://www.paulbaker.net/debian stable main
• deb-src ​http://www.paulbaker.net/debian stable main

MapServer is available as three packages:

• mapserver-cgi - The mapserv cgi program installed in /usr/lib/cgi-bin
• mapserver-utils - The other miscellaneous programs compiled as part of MapServer.
• libmapscript-perl - Mapscript/Perl? module.

To install them, issue into a root shell:

apt-get install mapserver-cgi mapserver-utils libmapscript-perl

or use your favorite package manager (aptitude, synaptic...).

Running /usr/lib/cgi-bin/mapserv -v should return the following output:

MapServer version 4.0.1 OUTPUT=PNG OUTPUT=JPEG OUTPUT=WBMP SUPPORTS=PROJ SUPPORTS=FREETYPE SUPPORTS=WMS_SERVER SUPPORTS=WMS_CLIENT SUPPORTS=WFS_CLIENT INPUT=TIFF INPUT=EPPL7 INPUT=JPEG INPUT=OGR INPUT=GDAL INPUT=SHAPEFILE

As of 2004/07/21, a vanilla Debian Sarge installation will cause mapserv to fail with:

mapserv: relocation error: /usr/lib/libgdal.so.1: undefined symbol: _ZTI13XMLEntityDecl?

because of changes in the current libgdal1_1.2.0-1 package. The solution is to force the installation of the package in Paul's repository. Check the current version:

​http://www.paulbaker.net/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-i386/gdal/

feed it to apt-get, and flag it with hold so its not upgraded:

apt-get install libgdal1=1.2+cvs.031111-1.0woody.1 echo libgdal1 hold | dpkg --set-selections

As usual, apt will uninstall any previously installed libgdal1.

What's missing?

So what's missing? WFS-Server, Flash/Ming?, Mapscript for all other languages besides Perl, PostGIS, MyGIS?, SDE, Oracle, and PDF. If you need these features, either email the package maintainer, Paul Baker at mailto:pbaker@…, and/or build MapServer yourself following steps below.

Compiling MapServer for Debian

This description relates to pre-woody (Debian r2.x) releases. Many of the supporting libraries are now available as packages, and many of the steps described here are likely to be obsolete.

0.1 Install Debian Woody base system You'll want to read ​http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual for instructions on that. 0.2 Compile kernel 2.4.18 so we have ext3 filesystems 0.3 Install useful packages

apt-get install sash # A statically link root shell for fixing fatal mistakes apt-get install sshd # Secure shell because telnet is bad. apt-get install dpkg-dev # Needed to use source packages

Stable version of tune2fs doesn't support ext3 journals, use testing version of the e2fsprogs package

vi /etc/apt/sources.list; apt-get update # point apt at testing distro apt-get install e2fsprogs

Since writing this, I have left apt pointing to testing (woody) since most of the libraries are closer to what MapServer wants compared to stable (2.2r6).

0.4 Update filesystems to use ext3

1.0 Installing support libraries needed for Mapserver

1.1 Proj4 (v4.4.3-1) My working Mapserver 3.5 box uses a compiled 4.4.3-2, but I notice 4.4.3 is available as a package.

apt-get install proj

1.2 GD Mapserver requires 1.2 or higher, at this time the Debian package is 1.7.3-0.1

apt-get install libgd1g

libgd1g lists FreeType2? as a dependancy, FreeType? support is required by Mapserver:

​http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/doc/unix-install-howto.html#d45e163

1.3 PHP I like DSOs for regular PHP work on the server, so let's compile a DSO for PHP and a CGI version that will only be used with PHPMapscript pages (.phtml)

apt-get install flex # PHP needs lex to compile apt-get install apache # else PHP and apache conflict on apache-common version apt-get install apache-dev # PHP needs APXS to compile apt-get install php4 apt-get source php4 # Probably needed for PHPMapscript to compile against

We need to compile PHP since the Debian pacakge has --with-regex=PHP while the 3.6 configure.in says that --with-system-regex should be used. (and we want a CGI as well anyway)

1.3.1 libPDF I am currently compiling in libPDF into PHP, native Mapserver PDF may be a far neater solution, but this has been convenient and I can use PDF in other apps. PDFlib is not available as a package so we must compile it:

cd /usr/src/pdflib-4.0.2 ./configure make make test make install

1.3.2 PosgreSQL?

apt-get install libpgsql2

1.3.2 Compiling and installing PHP For PHP 4.1.2 source retrived by apt-source, I used:

apt-get install libtiff3g # Required by PHP PDF functions ./configure --with-mysql --with-apxs --with-regex=system --with-postgresql --with-pdflib=/usr/local --with-jpeg --with-tiff --with-zlib make

Since we are not making major changes, let's just replace the PHP DSO rather than running make install:

cd /usr/lib/apache/1.3 mv libphp4.so libphp4.so.debian412 cp /usr/src/php4-4.1.2/.libs/libphp4.so libphp4.so.mapserv ln -s libphp4.so.mapserv libphp.so /etc/init.d/apache restart

This creates an Apache DSO which Mapserver will refuse to use, but I want to keep the majority of my PHP running from the DSO. Therefore I will compile PHP a second time as a CGI and only associate PHP/Mapscript? with .phtml. To create a CGI php executable:

./configure --with-mysql --with-regex=system --with-postgresql --with-gd --with-jpeg --with-png --with-freetype --with-pdflib=/usr/local --with-zlib --enable-force-cgi-redirect make

To install, follow the instructions in PHPMapScriptCGI (in my case to associate .phtml with the CGI version of PHP), do read these instructions as there are important security considerations to be made.

cp php /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ vi /etc/apache/srm.conf

<< AddHandler? phtml-script .phtml << Action phtml-script /cgi-bin/php

vi /etc/apache/httpd.conf # uncommment mod_actions.so /etc/init.d/apache restart

1.4 GDAL and OGR GDAL wants g++, g++ wants libraries from the testing distribution so on advice from a Debian expert, I will leave apt pointed at testing.

cd /usr/src/gdal-1.1.7 apt-get install g++ ./configure make make install # installs to usr/local/ ./bin, ./include, ./share and ./lib vi /etc/ld.so.conf # add /usr/local/lib to libs ldconfig # updates changes to ld.so.conf

Mapserver 3.7 seems to require GDAL 1.1.8 for to get "CSLFetchBoolean?"

2.0 Compile Mapserver Remember to remove ./config.cache if you change anything! I re-installed GD three times before I noticed this.

apt-get install libwww0 # Needed by --with-wmsclient apt-get install libwww-dev # Also needed by --with-wmsclient apt-get install libjpeg62 # So GD can render jpgs apt-get install libpng2 # So GD can render PNGs apt-get install libgd-dev # replaces libgd1g and more apt-get install proj # upgrade PROJ4 to 4.4.5

./configure --with-gd --without-tiff --with-freetype --with-proj --with-ogr --with-gdal --with-wmsclient --with-php=/usr/src/php4-4.1.2/

make

These notes were written for v 3.6.0, but I have recompiled using 3.6.3 and 3.7 with only minor differences (the replacement of libwww with libcurl and the addition of PDFlib and Ming).

3.0 Install Mapserver

cp ./.libs/php_mapscript.so /usr/lib/php/20010901/ # This next bit is an ugly hack until I set up PHP to look at

# my extensions directory: ln -s /usr/libs/php/20010901 /usr/local/lib/php4/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20010901

cp mapserv /usr/lib/cgi-bin # Only needed for our older CGI based apps

4.0 Testing

Install MapServer 4.2.2 and PHPMapScript from Debian Binary Packages

Add the next line in /etc/apt/sources.list

for testing:

deb ​http://agrogeomatic.educagri.fr/debian sarge main

for stable:

deb ​http://agrogeomatic.educagri.fr/debian woody main

And execute:

apt-get update ; apt-get install php-mapscript cgi-mapserver php4

More info in ​http://agrogeomatic.educagri.fr/debian