Map server basics

If you would like to build your own map server, you have to think it through carefully first. Do you need a complete map server or you can stack with an existing one? Is Google Maps good for you or you need more control on your maps? There are several options on the internet and with some of them, you just have to write a brief JavaScript code and voilà, you have a well-visualized map. In the next few articles I will show some options which won't need an independent map server, but learning at least one of them will be inevitable if you have to build one.

Apache optimization for a map server

The previous article covered most of the basics installing a simple Apache web server. With a working web server setup, you can make more specific considerations for a map server. There are simpler cases, like what kind of content you would like to serve or what kind of scripts and programs you will need. If you don't want an audiovisual wonder with something like flash, then the content mostly will consist of images and plain text. On the scripting side you will surely need JavaScript and Python. You may use some kind of shellscript on your way to build a map server, but you don't have to put any extra effort in optimizing that part. A bit more complicated list of considerations are, how to optimize the web server itself. You have to choose and set up the best MPM, set up privileges to various directories, choose the modules you have to use and throw away the unwanted ones, all in all, fine-tune the whole system.

Creating an Apache web server

Now that you have a working Linux distribution on a server computer it's time to initialize a web server framework. The Apache 2 is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol web server program. It is highly optimizable and modular. This article will help you through the installation process of Apache 2.2 on Debian 7 and Apache 2.4 on Fedora 20. The default layout and command usage in those distributions are slightly different. In the first place I will show some general configuration options, then I'll continue with the distribution specific installation process. Note that some dissimilarities come from the different distributions, but some of them are simply because version version differences. You can check the main differences between Apache 2.2 and 2.4 here.

A map server partitioning scheme

When you have a server machine and plan to run a dedicated Linux server, you should make some partitioning considerations first. For a mapserver you won't have to make a very detailed partitioning scheme, but you may consider to build some partitions for the basic functions of your Linux server. If you have to deal with RAID disks or GPT partitioning then I assume you already know how to structure your server. The following thoughts will be about a normal sized mapserver.