Nominatim Docker container

Fully-featured container for geocoding, reverse geocoding and address lookup based on Nominatim and Open Street Map data.

Table of content

• Build
• Run
• Develop

Build

The build process is fairly straightforward, but requires lots of computer resources and can take days to complete.

To build, install Docker and run following command:

docker build github.com/merlinnot/nominatim-docker \
  -t nominatim \
  --build-arg BUILD_THREADS=16 \
  --build-arg BUILD_MEMORY=32GB \
  --build-arg OSM2PGSQL_CACHE=28000 \
  --build-arg RUNTIME_THREADS=2 \
  --build-arg RUNTIME_MEMORY=8GB

Full list of build arguments:

Name	Default	Description
BUILD_THREADS	16	Number of threads used during build process.
BUILD_MEMORY	32GB	Memory dedicated to postgresql during build process.
PGSQL_VERSION	9.6	PostgreSQL version.
POSTGIS_VERSION	2.4	PostGIS version.
OSM2PGSQL_CACHE	24000	osm2pgsql cache size in MB, should be set to about 75% of memory available during build process, to a maximum of about 30000. Additional RAM will not be used.
PBF_URL	planet	URL to OpenStreetMap data in PBF format. See geofabrik.de for extracts.
REPLICATION_URL	planet	URL to directory with periodic updates. I recommend using geofabrik.de (see raw directory index and lookup updates).
IMPORT_ADMINISTRATIVE	false	Data provided in PBF_FILE might be used to import only administrative boundaries. Importing only administrative boundaries is much faster and is useful for tasks like country code reverse geocoding.
RUNTIME_THREADS	2	Estimated number of threads available to the running container.
RUNTIME_MEMORY	8GB	Estimated memory size available to the running container.

Run

To run container built in the previous step use

docker run --restart=always -d -p 80:80 merlinnot/nominatim-docker

API will be available at port 80 under /nominatim/ directory.

Develop

This project uses Devver, but feel free to use any of your favorite editors.

For development purposes I strongly encourage to start a build process using URLs for Monacco, it makes the process much faster:

docker build github.com/merlinnot/nominatim-docker \
  -t nominatim \
  --build-arg BUILD_THREADS=2 \
  --build-arg BUILD_MEMORY=8GB \
  --build-arg OSM2PGSQL_CACHE=2000 \
  --build-arg RUNTIME_THREADS=2 \
  --build-arg RUNTIME_MEMORY=8GB \
  --build-arg PBF_URL=http://download.geofabrik.de/europe/monaco-latest.osm.pbf \
  --build-arg REPLICATION_URL=http://download.geofabrik.de/monaco-updates