Installing TileServer GL on EndeavourOS Latest

Introduction

TileServer GL is an open-source mapping server that can turn vector tiles into raster tiles on the fly. In this tutorial, you will learn how to install TileServer GL on EndeavourOS Latest.

Prerequisites

Before you start with the installation, make sure that you have the following prerequisites:

  • A Linux-based operating system
  • A terminal with root access
  • Node.js and npm installed on your system (minimum version required: Node.js v10.x and npm v6.x)

Step 1 - Install TileServer GL

To install TileServer GL on EndeavourOS Latest, follow these steps:

  1. Open the terminal and enter the following command to install TileServer GL:
npm install -g tileserver-gl-light

This command will install TileServer GL globally on your system.

  1. Next, you need to create a directory where you can store the map data. Enter the following command to create a new directory:
mkdir -p ~/tileserver-gl/data

This command will create a new directory named data under your home directory.

Step 2 - Download the Map Data

Before you can start serving maps with TileServer GL, you need to download the map data. You can use any geo-data in vector format such as .pbf,.shp or .mbtiles. You can find a list of sources where you can download free vector tile data in Mapbox's vector tile specification.

For this tutorial, we will use an extract of OpenStreetMap from Geofabrik. Enter the following command to download the data:

wget https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/ireland-and-northern-ireland-latest.osm.pbf -P ~/tileserver-gl/data

This command will download an extract of OpenStreetMap that contains data for Ireland and Northern Ireland in .pbf format, and store it in the data directory.

Step 3 - Convert the Map Data to Vector Tiles

After you have downloaded the map data, you need to convert it to vector tiles using tileserver-gl-light. Enter the following command to convert the .pbf file to vector tiles:

tileserver-gl-light -i ~/tileserver-gl/data/ireland-and-northern-ireland-latest.osm.pbf

This command will convert the .pbf file to vector tiles using the default configuration. If you want to customize the configuration, you can pass a custom configuration file as the argument.

Step 4 - Serve the Maps

After you have converted the map data to vector tiles, you can serve them using tileserver-gl-light. Enter the following command to start the server:

tileserver-gl-light serve ~/tileserver-gl/data/ireland-and-northern-ireland-latest

This command will serve the vector tiles at http://localhost:8080. You can access the maps in your web browser by entering this URL into the address bar.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed and served maps with TileServer GL on EndeavourOS Latest.