Installing TileServer GL on Kali Linux

This tutorial will guide you through the process of installing and configuring TileServer GL on Kali Linux. TileServer GL is an open-source tool that enables you to create vector and raster maps from your geospatial data.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, ensure that you have the following resources available:

  • Kali Linux (latest version)
  • Node.js (version 12.x or later)
  • PostgreSQL (version 10 or later)
  • PostGIS (version 2.x or later)
  • GDAL (version 2.x or later)

Let's get started.

Step 1: Install Required Dependencies

The first step is to install the required dependencies for TileServer GL. You can do this by running the following commands in your terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib postgis gdal-bin nodejs npm -y

Step 2: Install TileServer GL

Once all the dependencies are installed, you can install TileServer GL by running the following command:

sudo npm install -g tileserver-gl

Step 3: Configure PostgreSQL/PostGIS

Next, we need to configure our PostgreSQL database to work with PostGIS. To create a new user, a database, and enable PostGIS, follow the steps below:

  1. Log in to your PostgreSQL database as the default "postgres" user by running the following command:
sudo -u postgres psql
  1. Create a new user by executing the command below:
CREATE USER tileserver WITH PASSWORD 'password';
  1. Create a new database for TileServer GL by running the following query:
CREATE DATABASE tiles OWNER tileserver;
  1. Enable PostGIS extension by running the following command:
CREATE EXTENSION postgis;

To verify that PostGIS is working, you can execute the following command:

SELECT PostGIS_version();

If there were no errors, and the command returned a version number, then PostGIS is installed correctly.

Step 4: Importing Data

In this step, we will import our geospatial data into the database. To do this, you can use the GDAL tools. Let's assume that we have a shapefile called myshapefile.shp.

  1. Create a SQL file with the necessary configuration by running the following command:
ogr2ogr --config PGCLIENTENCODING UTF8 -f PostgreSQL -lco GEOMETRY_NAME=geom -lco FID=gid -nlt PROMOTE_TO_MULTI -nln mytable PG:'dbname=tiles host=localhost user=tileserver password=password' myshapefile.shp

Note that the -nln mytable parameter is used to specify the name of the table that will hold the data from the shapefile.

  1. Import the data into your PostgreSQL database by running the following command:
psql -U tileserver -d tiles -f mytable.sql

Step 5: Start TileServer GL

After completing the above steps, you can start TileServer GL by running the following command:

tileserver-gl --config config.json

In the above command, config.json is the path to the configuration file for TileServer GL.

Step 6: Accessing the Map Tiles

Once TileServer GL is up and running, you can access the map tiles by opening a web browser and navigating to the following URL:

http://localhost:8080/data/mytable/{z}/{x}/{y}.pbf

In the above URL, replace mytable with the name of your table, and {z}, {x}, and {y} with the appropriate zoom level, x-coordinate, and y-coordinate for the desired tile.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed and configured TileServer GL on Kali Linux. You can now serve vector and raster tiles using your own geospatial data.