SETTING UP A QGIS SERVER AND POSTGIS ON CENTOS 6

QGIS server provides a web map server (WMS) by simply copying a QGIS project int the server directory. If you want to depend on newer postgresql-libs you need first to install the desired version of PostgreSQL and PostGIS as described bellow.

PostgreSQL and PostGIS

The following instructions are adapted from YUM installation - PostgreSQL wiki and UsersWikiuPostGIS20CentOS6pgdg - PostGIS.

Configuration

Configure yum repository

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo

and add the following excludes to base and updates sections:

exclude=postgresql*

Install PGDG RPM file

A PGDG file is available for each distribution/architecture/database version combination at http://yum.postgresql.org

wget http://yum.postgresql.org/<version>/<distribution>/<architecture>/pgdg-<database>.noarch.rpm

where version is 9.3, distribution is redhat, architecture is rhel-6-x86_64 and database is centos93-9.3-1.

Install RPM distribution:

rpm -ivh pgdg-centos93-9.3-1.noarch.rpm

Installation of PostgreSQL and PostGIS

List the available packages:

yum list postgres*

Installation:

yum install postgresql93-libs.x86_64 postgresql93-server.x86_64 postgresql93-devel.x86_64 postgis2_93

Configuration

Now perform a few post-installation setup commands, in the order: (1) Initialize the database cluster (required), (2) start database (recommended, if you want to use it straight away), (3) allow it to start-up automatically on reboot (recommended):

service postgresql-9.3 initdb
service postgresql-9.3 start
chkconfig postgresql-9.3 on

Some important files

In the pg_hba.conf file comment out the ident lines except for unix domain socket and add two new lines for md5 encryption

# IPv4 local connections:
#host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            ident
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5
# IPv6 local connections:
#host    all             all             ::1/128                 ident
host    all             all             ::1/128                 md5

Database and User

Before we can start, we need to create a new database and user.

Login as postgres superuser and create a new database

su -l postgres
createdb gis

Login into the database create a user and set a encrypted password

$ psql gis
> CREATE USER gis WITH SUPERUSER LOGIN PASSWORD 'gis';
> ALTER USER gis WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'gis';

Now test your configuration and install PostGIS extension

psql -h localhost -d gis -U gis -W
CREATE EXTENSION postgis;

Installation QGIS

First you need a running CentOS on a machine. In the default CentOS software repository qgis-server is not available. So you need first to add extra packages for enterprise linux (EPEL) repository as follow:

wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-<version>.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh epel-release-<version>.noarch.rpm

where the version I have tested it was 6-8.

Add the ELGIS repositories

wget http://elgis.argeo.org/repos/6/elgis-release-<version>.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh elgis-release-6-6_0.noarch.rpm

where the version I have tested it was 6-6_0.

Now install QGIS server:

yum install qgis-mapserver.x86_64

If you want to have QGIS libraries, QGIS Desktop run the following command

yum install qgis*

The scripts and configs are installed on CentOS: