Fun With HostGIS Day 0

HostGIS Linux is a great idea but it’s not “plug and play”

Nor would you expect it to be. I finnally got a test server working after numerous failed attempts.

I inherited a old Pentium MMX 200Mhz computer from my in-laws. They were just going to send it to be recycled, but I thought “Hey that would probably make a fine Linux box and even better, I could test the Linux based web mapping apps”.

I downloaded & burned the ISO boot image onto a CD and took it upstairs to try it out. First roadblock, niether of the computers (the other is a rarely used eMachines Pentium 533Mhz) would read the CD. The olny CD drive it worked in was the newer (~2002) CD Burner in the eMachines. Which I had to reconnect b/c I had disconnected it the last I was fidling with stuff for some reason.

However, I did not want to write over the hard drive in the eMachines, I want to use the old computer. So I cross connected the drive & it worked. Until I tried to actually use the server. Then I discovered that I didn’t have the driver for the brand new ethernet card I bought for the old computer. So I put the hard drive from the old computer into the eMachines and it is up & running.

I made a test map but am still having some trouble with loading data into the PostgresSQL DB. But whatever diffuculties I am having are certianly less than I’m sure I would have had if I tried installing & setting up all the components in the HostGIS setup myself. Thanks to those guys for at least getting me this far and saving me even more frustration.