Fun With HostGIS Day 0
16 08 2006
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.
I tried using VMWare Server to run HostGIS as a virtual machine last night. Unfortunately, the install failed, something about not finding the hard drive. Oh well. I’ll have to wait until I find some spare hardware. Good luck and keep us posted on your experience.
-Greg
It seems that to fit all these programs and preconfigurations on 1 cd that they have put a VERY stripped down version of Linux on there. I’ve also not had any luck connecting to the SSH server but I don’t really need that as I have easy access to the terminal itself. It is obviously designed with a “Standard Setup” in mind and if you have a strange situation , old hardware or new hardware, you’re probably going to have to bite the bullet and do some of the dirty work yourself.
Matt