WalkersGuide is a navigational aid primarily intended for blind and visual impaired pedestrians. It calculates routes and shows nearby points of interest. The project consists of an Android client and a server component. The latter performs the route calculation. The map data is provided by OpenStreetMap, a project to create a free map of the world.
This repository contains the server application. The following section gives an overview about the project structure. The subsequent sections cover installation instructions and usage notes.
Please visit https://www.walkersguide.org for more information about the project.
The map data for the routing process comes from OpenStreetMap. A country
or continent is downloaded and stored in a local Postgresql database. The bash script
shell/create_complete_database.sh creates a local copy of the OpenStreetMap database on your
server. Furthermore it calculates additional database tables like intersections, poi and a routing
graph. These tables are required to perform the creation of a walkers route.
The "webserver" folder contains python scripts to query data from the database and calculate the actual route. It starts a web server, which listens for client requests on a specific port, calls the route creation functions and returns the results to the client.
This section lists the required steps to install the WalkersGuide server under Debian 12 (Bookworm).
Install Postgresql, Postgis (an extension to handle spacial data types like points and lines) and pgrouting. You must at least use Postgresql >= 11, Postgis >= 2.5 and pgrouting >= 2.5:
root# apt install postgresql-15 postgresql-15-postgis-3 postgresql-15-pgrouting
Then create a new database user and assign a password. It must be a super user:
root# su postgres
postgres$ createuser -P -s wgs_writer
postgres$ exit
After that, change database access permissions in the file
root# vim /etc/postgresql/15/main/pg_hba.conf
to the following ones:
[...]
# TYPE DATABASE USER ADDRESS METHOD
#
# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
#local all all peer
#
# IPv4 local connections:
#host all all 127.0.0.1/32 md5
host all wgs_writer 127.0.0.1/32 md5
#
# IPv6 local connections:
#host all all ::1/128 md5
host all wgs_writer ::1/128 md5
#
# Allow replication connections from localhost, by a user with the
# replication privilege.
#local replication all peer
#host replication all 127.0.0.1/32 md5
#host replication all ::1/128 md5
Now you have to change some settings in the Postgresql main config. The defaults are fairly conservative and often don't fit the needs for a large db. The settings hardly depend on the hardware of your server. These are mine for a server with a Ryzen 3600 CPU, 64 GB Ram and 4 TB SSD:
root# vim /etc/postgresql/15/main/postgresql.conf
[...]
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# CUSTOMIZED OPTIONS
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
data_directory = '/mnt/navi/postgresql/15/main'
max_connections = 15
# buffers
effective_cache_size = 32GB
shared_buffers = 16GB
maintenance_work_mem = 6GB
work_mem = 768MB
temp_buffers = 64MB
max_locks_per_transaction = 256
# ssd
seq_page_cost = 1.0
random_page_cost = 1.0
effective_io_concurrency = 100
# misc optimizations
checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9
default_statistics_target = 500
constraint_exclusion = on
enable_partitionwise_join = on
enable_partitionwise_aggregate = on
Add the following Linux kernel params to /etc/sysctl.conf:
vm.overcommit_memory=2
vm.overcommit_ratio=80
and apply:
root# sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf
The tuning tipps come from the PostgreSQL wiki. Additionally you may use the postgresqltuner to check and optimize your postgresql configuration.
Lastly restart Postgresql:
root# systemctl restart postgresql.service
The WalkersGuide Android client requires a secure connection via SSL. Don't use cherrypy's own SSL server for that but Install and configure a webserver like nginx instead. The webserver should handle the SSL connection and redirect traffic to the WalkersGuide server component, which only runs locally at a different port.
You can find a sample configuration for nginx at config.example/nginx-walkersguide.org.conf.example.
First install Osmosis, OSMFilter, OSMConvert and Osmium:
root# apt install osmosis osmctools osmium-tool
Then download osm2po. The application creates a database table which represents the routing graph of all streets and ways. This graph is needed by pgrouting to calculate a route from start to the point of destination.
Create a tools folder and download osm2po (maybe update version number) and retrieve the program from http://www.osm2po.de:
osm$ cd /mnt/navi
osm$ mkdir tools
osm$ cd tools
osm$ wget http://www.osm2po.de/releases/osm2po-5.2.43.zip
osm$ unzip osm2po-5.2.43.zip -d osm2po-5.2.43
osm$ rm osm2po-5.2.43.zip
To use osm2po you have to accept its license once. To do so, enter the folder, start the demo.sh script and type "yes" when instructed. After that you can cancel the process and delete the already created folder.
osm$ cd osm2po-5.2.43
osm$ chmod +x demo.sh
osm$ ./demo.sh
# type yes and cancel by pressing ^c
osm$ rm -R hh
Install git, pip, parallel and screen
root# apt install git python3-pip python3-venv moreutils screen
Clone the WalkersGuide-Server repository
osm$ cd /mnt/navi
osm$ git clone https://github.com/scheibler/WalkersGuide-Server.git walkersguide
Enter the project directory and create some folders:
cd walkersguide
mkdir config logs
Create python virtual environment and install dependencies:
osm$ python3 -m venv .
osm$ source ./bin/activate
(walkersguide) osm$ pip install requests configobj cherrypy psycopg2-binary
(walkersguide) osm$ deactivate
If you later want to remove the python virtual environment again:
osm$ cd /mnt/navi/walkersguide
osm$ rm -R bin include lib lib64 pyvenv.cfg
Copy the osm2po configuration file. The config file from the example config folder and the map creation scripts below work well with osm2po versions <=5.2.43.
osm$ cp config.example/osm2po_5.0.18.conf.example config/osm2po.conf
Lastly copy the WalkersGuide example config file and adapt it to your needs:
osm$ cp config.example/wg_server.conf.example config/wg_server.conf
The example config contains an entry for Germany under the "maps" section. You may find the maps of other countries here.
It's recommended to launch the map creation process and the webserver within a screen session:
osm$ screen -S walkersguide
Create a new country/region database:
osm$ cd /mnt/navi/walkersguide
osm$ ./run create-map-database germany
Afterwards launch the webserver:
osm$ ./run start-webserver
Test with:
osm$ wget --header='Accept-Encoding: gzip' https://walkersguide.example.com/get_status -O - | gunzip
Since version 1.3.2 the WalkersGuide server provides some very basic map usage statistics:
osm$ ./run statistics