Gisgraphy installation guide

Before install and launch Gisgraphy, you must setup java, postgres, and postgis. it is not, properly speaking, the installation of Gisgraphy, and if you already havn't Postgres, Postgis and java installed, you must install it first. a tutorial is provided here for linux and here for windows

Download a Gisgraphy distribution

  • Fisrt you have to download a distribution here. Download a tar.gz file, if you are on Linux or download a zip file, if you are on windows.
  • Then extract it : tar xvf YOURFILE if you're on linux or double click on the file if your on Windows

Initialize The database

Here are the command to run to and init the Gisgraphy tables
#create tables;
psql -UYOURUSER -d gisgraphy -f /path/to/file/create_tables.sql

#create spatial indexes
 psql -U YOURUSER -h YOURIP -d gisgraphy -f createGISTIndex.sql
Where YOURUSER is a postgresql user with admin rights,YOURIP is the ip adress of your server(127.0.0.1 in most case) and YOURPOSTGRESVERSION is your postgres version (8.3 in this tutorial)

Then insert users (...for the admin interface,... you don't have to log to use gisgraphy webservices) in the database. A script called insert-users.sql is provided with two default users: one with admin rights and one with simple rights.
psql -UYOURPOSTGRESQLUSER -d gisgraphy -f /path/to/file/insert_users.sql

It is HIGHLY recommended to modify them for security : once gisgraphy is installed :

Edit database and Gisgraphy settings

Go into the directory you've extract the gisgraphy distribution, Then edit the database settings in the jdbc.properties file in the directory 'webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes' of the Gisgraphy distribution.


You can edit the configuration (import, and so on) in the env.properties file in directory 'webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes' of the Gisgraphy distribution (for more information see options documentation).

Good to know : if you want to use Google maas features (see street, etc), you must set the googleMapAPIKey in the env.properties

that's all, you can now start gisgraphy

Start Gisgraphy

  • Open a command line (Start/run and type 'cmd')
  • Change the current directory to the folder where you've unzip the files
  • Change the rights of the launch.sh script if you are on linux : chmod +x launch.sh
  • Launch the launch script (.sh on Linux, .command on mac and .bat on windows "

Important : You must type the command line in the directory where you've extract the Gisgraphy files.

The directory where you type the command to start your servlet container (e.g : java -jar start.jar for Jetty or startup.sh/startup.bat for Tomcat) determines the directory Where The full text data will be stored : the data will be stored in the $Current_Working_directory/solr Directory. In other words :
  • If you are in directory 'foo' and you type : "java -jar ./directory/where/Gisgraphy/is/Extracted/start.jar" The data will be stored in foo/solr, because you are in the 'foo' directory
  • If you are in directory 'foo' and you type : "cd directroy/where/gisgraphy/is/extracted/start.jar" and then "java -jar start.jar", the Data will be stored in the 'extracted' directory, because you are in the 'extracted' directory.
This is the same thing for Tomcat or any servlet Container (Resin, ...) due to solr. More...

To avoid OutOfMemoryError : you must launch Gisgraphy with a minimum memory of 512M. To do this : set your CATALINA_OPTS to -Xms512M -Xmx512M (e.g : add this CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx512M to the .bashrc file in your home directory)


See if it works

Open a browser and go to http://localhost:8080/mainMenu.html. you should see the admin page and then go to http://localhost:8080/ you should see a Gisgraphy page

And now...

Now, You can :