TileCache setup

[Keith Bornhorst]

Late request on a Friday... Maybe I'll be able to answer this myself by the end of the weekend, but figured I'd see if anyone can point me in the right direction.

Environment:

- Ubuntu 12.04

- OTM v1.3 + Philly dirs/files from OTM-master

- Apache2, PostgreSQL, GeoServer all up and running on same machine

Status:

- sync'ed, migrated, one zipcode, one neighborhood, zero trees (still working on those)

- map loads, but no tiles

Regardless of the lack of trees, I'd like to get TileCache up and running. GeoServer comes with plenty of layers/services that I can test with, methinks.

The problem is that I'm new to Ubuntu and there appears to be different ways to run TileCache (CGI, mod_python, standalone WSGI, FastCGI, etc.

What's the most common configuration people are using for OTM + TileCache?

• The machine has TileCache installed (sudo pip install TileCache) at /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/TileCache/
  
• I see the /OpenTreeMap/tilecache/tilecache.cfg file and have edited it a bit
• Changed tmp directory
• Added some layer sections similar to SanDiego/Philly/etc.
• [Map]
• type=WMS
• url=http://DontMindSharingJustNotViaGoogleGroups:8080/geoserver/wms?transparent=true
• extension=png
• layers=greenprint
• bbox=-20037508.34,-20037508.34,20037508.34,20037508.34
• srs=EPSG:900913
• reproject=true
• levels=21
• I've updated the apache2 config file for the site (/etc/apache2/sites-available/default)
•  <Directory /home/myuserdirectory/www/opentreemap/tilecache>
• AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
• Options +ExecCGI
• </Directory>

I'm obviously missing something small (another config file? another alias or symbolic link? Maybe it's erroring and I just don't know where to look?) or maybe something really big. Any thoughts on what of the above areas or causing the issue?

Thanks,
Keith

[Keith Bornhorst]

Forgot to mention that the /OpenTreeMap/tilecache/ directory has a config file, but no .py or .cgi (tilecache.py, tilecache.cgi) files that I sometimes see mentioned. Not sure if I missed an install step, need to link those in from somewhere else, or what....

Thanks again,

Keith

[Bob Troester]

Keith,

I had set up my TileCache a little differently, but it seems to be working. One thing, the file in your OpenStreeMap/tilecache directory is a version of the tilecache.cfg file that the TileCache install puts in /etc/tilecache.cfg. Since I'm confused as to which of these two files TileCache is actually using in our OpenTreeMap configurations, I've temporarily made them both the same. For CGI I use the default directory for Ubuntu of /usr/lib/cgi-bin. In there I put a link pointing to /usr/local/bin/tilecache.cgi. (See the other tilecache commands installed in that directory.) I use cgi instead of fcgi or other flavor just because it's simpler, since Apache, as installed, was all set up for cgi.This is all explained in the TileCache docs (http://tilecache.org/docs/README.html). I think a good idea is to add the "[basic]" configuration in tilecache.cfg

[basic]
type=WMS
url=http://labs.metacarta.com/wms/vmap0
extension=png

Then you can quickly check it works by entering localhost/cgi-bin/tilecache.cgi/1.0.0/basic/0/0/0.png in your browser to see a neat half-world map.
Bob

[Keith Bornhorst]

I appreciate the detailed help, Bob. My tilecache install/config is now serving up a half-world map for [basic]!

It looks like many OTM implementation create a Layer Group to display neighborhood boundaries, plots and trees and then have TileCache process that layer.

For example: http://phillytreemap.org/tilecache/1.0.0/PTM/11/596/1272.png is a tile for the "PTM" layer group @ https://phillytreemap.org/geoserver/wms?service=WMS&version=1.1.0&request=GetMap&layers=ptm&styles=&bbox=-76.137,38.45,-74.383,40.609&width=415&height=512&srs=EPSG:4326&format=application/openlayers

I'll start trying to set up something similar to the above and get TileCache to process it.