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How to install TileServer GL on OpenBSD

Tileserver GL allows you to serve your own vector tiles easily. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation process of TileServer GL on OpenBSD.

Requirements

Before we begin, make sure that your system meets the following requirements:

• OpenBSD 6.0 or higher installed and updated
• root or sudo access
• Basic knowledge of the OpenBSD command line

Step 1: Install Node.js and NPM

TileServer GL requires Node.js and NPM to run. To install these, open your terminal and run the following command:

$ sudo pkg_add node

This will install Node.js and NPM on your system.

Step 2: Install TileServer GL

Once Node.js and NPM have been installed, you can install TileServer GL. To do this, run the following command:

$ sudo npm install -g tileserver-gl-light

This will download and install TileServer GL on your system. The -g flag installs TileServer GL globally, which means that it can be used system-wide.

Step 3: Create a TileServer GL project

Now that TileServer GL is installed, you can create a new project. To do this, create a new directory and navigate into it:

$ mkdir tileserver
$ cd tileserver

Once you are in the tileserver directory, you can initialize a new TileServer GL project:

$ tileserver-gl-light init

This will create a data directory and a config.json file inside the tileserver directory.

Step 4: Download vector tiles

To serve vector tiles, you will need to download them first. There are several sources of vector tiles available, such as OpenStreetMap, Mapbox, and others.

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will use the OpenStreetMap vector tiles. You can download them using the following command:

$ curl -o berlin.mbtiles https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/germany/berlin-latest.mbtiles

This will download the berlin-latest.mbtiles file of Berlin, Germany.

Step 5: Configure TileServer GL

Now that TileServer GL is installed and you have downloaded vector tiles, you can configure TileServer GL to serve these tiles.

Open the config.json file in your favorite text editor and edit it as follows:

{
  "options": {
    "paths": {
      "root": "./data",
      "fonts": "./data/fonts"
    }
  },
  "data": {
    "Berlin": {
      "mbtiles": "./berlin.mbtiles"
    }
  },
  "styles": {
    "Berlin": {
      "style": "./style.json"
    }
  }
}

The paths sections specifies the paths to the data and fonts directories. The data section specifies the sources of vector tiles. In this case, we have added the berlin.mbtiles file we downloaded earlier. Finally, the styles section specifies which style should be used to render the vector tiles.

Step 6: Run TileServer GL

Now that everything is configured, you can start TileServer GL by running the following command:

$ tileserver-gl-light serve berlin

This will start TileServer GL and serve the vector tiles of Berlin on http://localhost:8080. You can now open your favorite web browser and go to http://localhost:8080 to see the vector tiles in action.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have shown you how to install and use TileServer GL on OpenBSD. With TileServer GL, you can serve your own vector tiles and customize them to your liking. We hope that this tutorial has been helpful and you are now able to use TileServer GL on your OpenBSD system.

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