# Install Nominatim in a virtual machine for development and testing
-This document describes how you can install Nominatim inside a Ubuntu 16
+This document describes how you can install Nominatim inside a Ubuntu 22
virtual machine on your desktop/laptop (host machine). The goal is to give
you a development environment to easily edit code and run the test suite
without affecting the rest of your system.
PHP errors are written to `/var/log/apache2/error.log`.
With `echo` and `var_dump()` you write into the output (HTML/XML/JSON) when
-you either add `&debug=1` to the URL (preferred) or set
-`@define('CONST_Debug', true);` in `settings/local.php`.
+you either add `&debug=1` to the URL.
In the Python BDD test you can use `logger.info()` for temporary debug
statements.
Yes, Vagrant and Virtualbox can be installed on MS Windows just fine. You need a 64bit
version of Windows.
+##### Will it run on Apple Silicon?
+
+You might need to replace Virtualbox with [Parallels](https://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/).
+There is no free/open source version of Parallels.
##### Why Monaco, can I use another country?
bug fixes) get added since those usually only get applied to new/changed data.
Also this document skips the optional Wikipedia data import which affects ranking
-of search results. See [Nominatim installation](https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/admin/Installation) for details.
+of search results. See [Nominatim installation](https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/admin/Installation)
+for details.
##### Why Ubuntu? Can I test CentOS/Fedora/CoreOS/FreeBSD?
-There is a Vagrant script for CentOS available, but the Nominatim directory
+There used to be a Vagrant script for CentOS available, but the Nominatim directory
isn't symlinked/mounted to the host which makes development trickier. We used
it mainly for debugging installation with SELinux.
name, location of files. We chose Ubuntu because that is closest to the
nominatim.openstreetmap.org production environment.
-You can configure/download other Vagrant boxes from [https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search](https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search).
+You can configure/download other Vagrant boxes from
+[https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search](https://app.vagrantup.com/boxes/search).
##### How can I connect to an existing database?
-Let's say you have a Postgres database named `nominatim_it` on server `your-server.com` and port `5432`. The Postgres username is `postgres`. You can edit `settings/local.php` and point Nominatim to it.
+Let's say you have a Postgres database named `nominatim_it` on server `your-server.com`
+and port `5432`. The Postgres username is `postgres`. You can edit the `.env` in your
+project directory and point Nominatim to it.
+
+ NOMINATIM_DATABASE_DSN="pgsql:host=your-server.com;port=5432;user=postgres;dbname=nominatim_it
- pgsql:host=your-server.com;port=5432;user=postgres;dbname=nominatim_it
-
No data import or restarting necessary.
If the Postgres installation is behind a firewall, you can try
ssh -L 9999:localhost:5432 your-username@your-server.com
inside the virtual machine. It will map the port to `localhost:9999` and then
-you edit `settings/local.php` with
+you edit `.env` file with
- @define('CONST_Database_DSN', 'pgsql:host=localhost;port=9999;user=postgres;dbname=nominatim_it');
+ NOMINATIM_DATABASE_DSN="pgsql:host=localhost;port=9999;user=postgres;dbname=nominatim_it"
-To access postgres directly remember to specify the hostname, e.g. `psql --host localhost --port 9999 nominatim_it`
+To access postgres directly remember to specify the hostname,
+e.g. `psql --host localhost --port 9999 nominatim_it`
##### My computer is slow and the import takes too long. Can I start the virtual machine "in the cloud"?