GeoNode Project

Overview

The following steps will guide you to a new setup of GeoNode Project. All guides will first install and configure the system to run it in DEBUG mode (also known as DEVELOPMENT mode) and then by configuring an HTTPD server to serve GeoNode through the standard HTTP (80) port.

Those guides are not meant to be used on a production system. There will be dedicated chapters that will show you some hints to optimize GeoNode for a production-ready machine. In any case, we strongly suggest to task an experienced DevOp or System Administrator before exposing your server to the WEB.

Ubuntu 18.04

This part of the documentation describes the complete setup process for GeoNode on an Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit clean environment (Desktop or Server). All examples use shell commands that you must enter on a local terminal or a remote shell. - If you have a graphical desktop environment you can open the terminal application after login; - if you are working on a remote server the provider or sysadmin should has given you access through an ssh client.

Install the dependencies

In this section, we are going to install all the basic packages and tools needed for a complete GeoNode installation. To follow this guide, a piece of basic knowledge about Ubuntu Server configuration and working with a shell is required. This guide uses vim as the editor; fill free to use nano, gedit or others.

Upgrade system packages

Check that your system is already up-to-date with the repository running the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Create a Dedicated User

In the following steps a User named geonode is used: to run installation commands the user must be in the sudo group.

Create User geonode if not present:

# Follow the prompts to set the new user's information.
# It is fine to accept the defaults to leave all of this information blank.
sudo adduser geonode

# The following command adds the user geonode to group sudo
sudo usermod -aG sudo geonode

# make sure the newly created user is allowed to login by ssh
# (out of the scope of this documentation) and switch to User geonode
su geonode

Packages Installation

Note

You don’t need to install the system packages if you want to run the project using Docker

First, we are going to install all the system packages needed for the GeoNode setup.

# Install packages from GeoNode core
sudo apt install -y gdal-bin
sudo apt install -y python3-pip python3-dev python3-virtualenv python3-venv virtualenvwrapper
sudo apt install -y libxml2 libxml2-dev gettext
sudo apt install -y libxslt1-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libpq-dev libgdal-dev
sudo apt install -y software-properties-common build-essential
sudo apt install -y git unzip gcc zlib1g-dev libgeos-dev libproj-dev
sudo apt install -y sqlite3 spatialite-bin libsqlite3-mod-spatialite

# If the following does not work, you can skip it
sudo apt install -y libgdal20

# Install Openjdk
sudo -i apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-8-jdk-headless default-jdk-headless -y
sudo update-java-alternatives --jre-headless --jre --set java-1.8.0-openjdk-amd64

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt autoremove -y
sudo apt autoclean -y
sudo apt purge -y
sudo apt clean -y

# Install Packages for Virtual environment management
sudo apt install -y virtualenv virtualenvwrapper

# Install text editor
sudo apt install -y vim

Geonode Project Installation

Geonode project is the proper way to run a customized installation of Geonode. The repository of geonode-project contains a minimal set of files following the structure of a django-project. Geonode itself will be installed as a requirement of your project. Inside the project structure is possible to extend, replace or modify all geonode componentse (e.g. css and other static files, templates, models..) and even register new django apps without touching the original Geonode code.

Note

You can call your geonode project whatever you like following the naming conventions for python packages (generally lower case with underscores (_). In the examples below, replace my_geonode with whatever you would like to name your project.

See also the README file on geonode-project repository

First of all we need to prepare a new Python Virtual Environment

Prepare the environment

sudo mkdir -p /opt/geonode_custom/
sudo usermod -a -G www-data geonode
sudo chown -Rf geonode:www-data /opt/geonode_custom/
sudo chmod -Rf 775 /opt/geonode_custom/

Clone the source code

cd /opt/geonode_custom/
git clone https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode-project.git -b 3.2.x

Make an instance out of the Django Template

Note

We will call our instance my_geonode. You can change the name at your convenience.

vim ~/.bashrc
# add the following line to the bottom
source /usr/share/virtualenvwrapper/virtualenvwrapper.sh

source /usr/share/virtualenvwrapper/virtualenvwrapper.sh
mkvirtualenv --python=/usr/bin/python3 my_geonode

Alterantively you can also create the virtual env like below
python3.8 -m venv /home/geonode/dev/.venvs/my_geonode
source /home/geonode/dev/.venvs/my_geonode/bin/activate

pip install Django==3.2

django-admin startproject --template=./geonode-project -e py,sh,md,rst,json,yml,ini,env,sample,properties -n monitoring-cron -n Dockerfile my_geonode

# Install the Python packages
cd /opt/geonode_custom/my_geonode
pip install -r requirements.txt --upgrade --no-cache --no-cache-dir
pip install -e . --upgrade

# Install GDAL Utilities for Python
pip install pygdal=="`gdal-config --version`.*"

# Dev scripts
mv .override_dev_env.sample .override_dev_env
mv manage_dev.sh.sample manage_dev.sh
mv paver_dev.sh.sample paver_dev.sh

Install and Configure the PostgreSQL Database System

In this section we are going to install the PostgreSQL packages along with the PostGIS extension. Those steps must be done only if you don’t have the DB already installed on your system.

# Ubuntu 18.04
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ `lsb_release -cs`-pgdg main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list'
sudo wget --no-check-certificate --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt update -y; sudo apt install -y postgresql-13 postgresql-13-postgis-3 postgresql-13-postgis-3-scripts postgresql-13 postgresql-client-13

We now must create two databases, my_geonode and my_geonode_data, belonging to the role my_geonode.

Warning

This is our default configuration. You can use any database or role you need. The connection parameters must be correctly configured on settings, as we will see later in this section.

Databases and Permissions

First, create the geonode user. GeoNode is going to use this user to access the database

sudo service postgresql start
sudo -u postgres createuser -P my_geonode

# Use the password: geonode

You will be prompted asked to set a password for the user. Enter geonode as password.

Warning

This is a sample password used for the sake of simplicity. This password is very weak and should be changed in a production environment.

Create database my_geonode and my_geonode_data with owner my_geonode

sudo -u postgres createdb -O my_geonode my_geonode
sudo -u postgres createdb -O my_geonode my_geonode_data

Next let’s create PostGIS extensions

sudo -u postgres psql -d my_geonode -c 'CREATE EXTENSION postgis;'
sudo -u postgres psql -d my_geonode -c 'GRANT ALL ON geometry_columns TO PUBLIC;'
sudo -u postgres psql -d my_geonode -c 'GRANT ALL ON spatial_ref_sys TO PUBLIC;'
sudo -u postgres psql -d my_geonode -c 'GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO my_geonode;'

sudo -u postgres psql -d my_geonode_data -c 'CREATE EXTENSION postgis;'
sudo -u postgres psql -d my_geonode_data -c 'GRANT ALL ON geometry_columns TO PUBLIC;'
sudo -u postgres psql -d my_geonode_data -c 'GRANT ALL ON spatial_ref_sys TO PUBLIC;'
sudo -u postgres psql -d my_geonode_data -c 'GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO my_geonode;'

Final step is to change user access policies for local connections in the file pg_hba.conf

sudo vim /etc/postgresql/13/main/pg_hba.conf

Scroll down to the bottom of the document. We want to make local connection trusted for the default user.

Make sure your configuration looks like the one below.

...
# DO NOT DISABLE!
# If you change this first entry you will need to make sure that the
# database superuser can access the database using some other method.
# Noninteractive access to all databases is required during automatic
# maintenance (custom daily cronjobs, replication, and similar tasks).
#
# Database administrative login by Unix domain socket
local   all             postgres                                trust

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     md5
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::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

Warning

If your PostgreSQL database resides on a separate/remote machine, you’ll have to allow remote access to the databases in the /etc/postgresql/13/main/pg_hba.conf to the geonode user and tell PostgreSQL to accept non-local connections in your /etc/postgresql/13/main/postgresql.conf file

Restart PostgreSQL to make the change effective.

sudo service postgresql restart

PostgreSQL is now ready. To test the configuration, try to connect to the geonode database as geonode role.

psql -U postgres my_geonode
# This should not ask for any password

psql -U my_geonode my_geonode
# This should ask for the password geonode

# Repeat the test with geonode_data DB
psql -U postgres my_geonode_data
psql -U my_geonode my_geonode_data

Run GeoNode Project for the first time in DEBUG Mode

Warning

Be sure you have successfully completed all the steps of the section Install the dependencies.

This command will run both GeoNode and GeoServer locally after having prepared the Spatialite database. The server will start in DEBUG (or DEVELOPMENT) mode, and it will start the following services:

  1. GeoNode on http://localhost:8000/

  2. GeoServer on http://localhost:8080/geoserver/

This modality is beneficial to debug issues and/or develop new features, but it cannot be used on a production system.

# Prepare the GeoNode Spatialite database (the first time only)
./paver_dev.sh setup
./paver_dev.sh sync

Note

In case you want to start again from a clean situation, just run

./paver_dev.sh reset_hard

Warning

This will blow up completely your local_settings, delete the SQLlite database and remove the GeoServer data dir.

# Run the server in DEBUG mode
./paver_dev.sh start

Once the server has finished the initialization and prints on the console the sentence GeoNode is now available., you can open a browser and go to:

http://localhost:8000/

Sign-in with:

user: admin
password: admin

From now on, everything already said for GeoNode Core (please refer to the section 3. Postgis database Setup and following), applies to a GeoNode Project.

Be careful to use the new paths and names everywhere:

  • Everytime you’ll find the keyword geonode, you’ll need to use your geonode custom name instead (in this example my_geonode).

  • Everytime you’ll find paths pointing to /opt/geonode/, you’ll need to update them to point to your custom project instead (in this example /opt/geonode_custom/my_geonode).

Docker

Warning

Before moving with this section, you should have read and clearly understood the INSTALLATION > GeoNode Core sections, and in particular the Docker one. Everything said for the GeoNode Core Vanilla applies here too, except that the Docker container names will be slightly different. As an instance if you named your project my_geonode, your containers will be called:

'django4my_geonode' instead of 'django4geonode' and so on...

Deploy an instance of a geonode-project Django template 3.2.0 with Docker on localhost

Prepare the environment

sudo mkdir -p /opt/geonode_custom/
sudo usermod -a -G www-data geonode
sudo chown -Rf geonode:www-data /opt/geonode_custom/
sudo chmod -Rf 775 /opt/geonode_custom/

Clone the source code

cd /opt/geonode_custom/
git clone https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode-project.git -b 3.2.x

Make an instance out of the Django Template

Note

We will call our instance my_geonode. You can change the name at your convenience.

source /usr/share/virtualenvwrapper/virtualenvwrapper.sh
mkvirtualenv --python=/usr/bin/python3 my_geonode

Alterantively you can also create the virtual env like below
python3.8 -m venv /home/geonode/dev/.venvs/my_geonode
source /home/geonode/dev/.venvs/my_geonode/bin/activate

pip install Django==3.2

django-admin startproject --template=./geonode-project -e py,sh,md,rst,json,yml,ini,env,sample,properties -n monitoring-cron -n Dockerfile my_geonode
cd /opt/geonode_custom/my_geonode

Modify the code and the templates and rebuild the Docker Containers

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml build --no-cache

Finally, run the containers

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up -d

Deploy an instance of a geonode-project Django template 3.2.0 with Docker on a domain

Note

We will use www.example.org as an example. You can change the name at your convenience.

Stop the containers

cd /opt/geonode_custom/my_geonode

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml stop

Edit the ENV override file in order to deploy on www.example.org

Replace everywhere localhost with www.example.org

vim .env

# e.g.: :%s/localhost/www.example.org/g

Note

It is possible to override here even more variables to customize the GeoNode instance. See the GeoNode Settings section in order to get a list of the available options.

Run the containers in daemon mode

docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.override.example-org.yml up --build -d