We assume some basic familiarity with Linux and being able to run commands from the shell. Being able to copy-paste examples from here, and adjust them slightly to fit your needs (as described), is sufficient. It may be possible to do everything within other compatible systems such as BSD or Windows Subsystem for Linux but for the sake of simplicity we will focus here on Linux as generically as possible. We will describe dependencies from Debian/Ubuntu and RedHat/CentOS, for your convenience, but for other distributions there should be comparable packages. The shell is assumed to be bash but commands should largely work regardless of which shell you are using.
- Python v3.6 or higher and PIP. Further Python package dependencies will be described along the way.
- PostgreSQL major version 13 or higher and suitable PostGIS to go along with it (3.3.2 or higher; versions of PostGIS are linked to PostgreSQL version so be aware)
- Apache2 (you could use a different web server but this is the one we will give instructions for)
- NodeJS (developed under v18.4.2; check back for updates to latest NodeJS)
We highly recommend installing NodeJS using Node Version Manager (nvm) and NOT from your Linux distribution's package manager. This way, you can choose the specific version of NodeJS to use with this server (e.g., most likely you will want to choose version 18 for now).
With nvm, go ahead and install NodeJS v18 using the following command: nvm install 18 and you can enable it right away with the command node use 18.
Most of the necessary software is available from the standard packages repository:
apt-get install -y git python3-pip postgresql postgresql-postgis apache2 screen sudo
If you have an older version of Debian or Ubuntu then you will have to look into 'backports', or better yet, upgrade (especially if this is going to be a public-facing server).
On a recent version of a RedHat-based distro you should be able to use Yum simply with:
yum -y install git python3-pip postgresql postgresql-server postgis httpd screen sudo
However, on older releases like CentOS or Enterprise Linux 7 then you will need additional steps to get PostgreSQL 13 or higher.
yum -y install https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-7-x86_64/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpmyum -y updateyum -y install postgresql13 postgresql13-server postgis33_13
Log into your server machine as the user under which you wish to run the backend (and frontend) servers. This should not be root. If you are root, and have not yet made a normal user, then create a user with a suitable name and a secure password (e.g. using the adduser command). Be sure to put your normal user in the sudo (Debian/Ubuntu) or wheel (RedHat) group. You can do this by running a command like adduser <my_user> sudo as root. Then go ahead and log into your normal user while continuing this tutorial.
You will need to prefix sudo onto commands that require root (administrative) privileges. This is largely limited to installing distribution packages, editing Apache2 configuration, reloading Apache2, and creating the PostgreSQL database tables with the appropriate extensions.
The downloading and processing steps, visualized:
Please see the Downloading chapter.
Please see the Processing chapter.
We will walk through the steps of configuring an image server, the backend and the frontend to serve the web-app as depicted in this diagram:
Please see the Apache2 web server chapter.
Please see the backend chapter.
Please see the frontend chapter.
- Learn about using GNU screen to manage the backend and frontend servers as long-running processes in the background.
- Set up the production database and run the production frontend server (under construction)