Installing Lizmap Web Client on Linux Debian or Ubuntu
Note
If you want to quickly install and test Lizmap Web Client in a few steps, you can follow those instructions using Docker and Docker-Compose.
Note
In Debian distributions, you can work as administrator (log in with root), without using sudo on contrary to Ubuntu.
Generic Server Configuration with Nginx server
This documentation provides an example for configuring a server with the Debian 11 distribution. We assume you have base system installed and updated.
Warning
This page does not describe how to secure your Nginx server. It’s just for a demonstration.
Configure Locales
For simplicity, it is interesting to configure the server with UTF-8 default encoding.
# configure locales
locale-gen fr_FR.UTF-8 #replace fr with your language
dpkg-reconfigure locales
# define your timezone [useful for logs]
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
apt install ntp ntpdate
Note
It is also necessary configure the other software so that they are using this default encoding if this is not the case.
Installing necessary packages
Warning
Lizmap web client 3.6 is based on Jelix 1.8. You must install at least the 7.4 version of PHP. The dom, simplexml, pcre, session, tokenizer and spl extensions are required (they are generally turned on in a standard PHP 7/8 installation)
sudo su # only necessary if you are not logged in as root
apt update # update packages list
apt install curl openssl libssl1.1 nginx-full nginx nginx-common
On Debian 11 or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, install these packages:
apt install php7.4-fpm php7.4-cli php7.4-bz2 php7.4-curl php7.4-gd php7.4-intl php7.4-json php7.4-mbstring php7.4-pgsql php7.4-sqlite3 php7.4-xml php7.4-ldap php7.4-redis
Web configuration
Create a new file /etc/nginx/sites-available/lizmap.conf:
server {
listen 80;
server_name localhost;
root /var/www/html/lizmap;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
# compression setting
gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 5;
gzip_min_length 100;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript text/json;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
set $path_info $fastcgi_path_info; # because of bug http://trac.nginx.org/nginx/ticket/321
try_files $fastcgi_script_name =404;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $path_info;
fastcgi_param PATH_TRANSLATED $document_root$path_info;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME $http_host;
}
}
You should declare the lizmap.local domain name somewhere (in your /etc/hosts, or into your DNS..), or replace it by your own domain name.
Enable the virtual host you just created:
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/lizmap.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/lizmap.conf
Restart Nginx
You must restart the Nginx server to validate the configuration.
service nginx restart
Enable geolocation
The automatic geolocation provided by Lizmap relies on Google services. To enable it, your webGIS must be placed under a secure protocol, like HTTPS. See for more details:
Create directories for data
QGIS files and other cache files will be stored into these directories.
mkdir /home/data
mkdir /home/data/cache/
Spatial Database: PostgreSQL
Note
This section is optional. Please read PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL and PostGIS can be very useful to manage spatial data centralized manner on the server.
Install
On Debian 11, you’ll find PostgreSQL 13.
First install packages:
apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib postgis pgtune
You may have to recreate the cluster on a fresh install, in order to set the locale. You can jump this step if the locale is correctly set, or if you already have databases. Careful: these instructions destroy any existing databases!
service postgresql stop
pg_dropcluster --stop 13 main
pg_createcluster 13 main --locale fr_FR.UTF8 -p 5432 --start
Now You can create a user and a database for Lizmap, into Postgresql.
Adapting the PostgreSQL configuration
We will use pgtune, an utility program that can automatically generate a PostgreSQL configuration file
adapted to the properties of the server (memory, processors, etc.)
# PostgreSQL Tuning with pgtune
pgtune -i /etc/postgresql/13/main/postgresql.conf -o /etc/postgresql/13/main/postgresql.conf.pgtune --type Web
cp /etc/postgresql/13/main/postgresql.conf /etc/postgresql/13/main/postgresql.conf.backup
cp /etc/postgresql/13/main/postgresql.conf.pgtune /etc/postgresql/13/main/postgresql.conf
nano /etc/postgresql/13/main/postgresql.conf
# Restart to check any problems
service postgresql restart
# If error messages, increase the linux kernel configuration variables
echo "kernel.shmall = 4294967296" >> /etc/sysctl.conf # to increase shred buffer param in kernel
echo "kernel.shmmax = 4294967296" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
echo 4294967296 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmall
echo 4294967296 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
sysctl -a | sort | grep shm
# Restart PostgreSQL
service postgresql restart
For installing Lizmap tables into the PostgreSQL database (instead of SqLite by default), you can continue until the next section
below when you need to edit the file lizmap/var/config/profiles.ini.php.
Installing sources of Lizmap Web Client
Retrieve the latest available stable version from our Github release page.
Warning
Do not use the automatic ZIP file created by GitHub on the website. Only use ZIP attached to a release.
We first set some variable to ease instructions. Let’s set the version and the location where Lizmap will be installed. Adjust these values to your requirements.
VERSION=3.6.5
LOCATION=/var/www
Then you can install the zip file:
cd $LOCATION
wget https://github.com/3liz/lizmap-web-client/releases/download/$VERSION/lizmap-web-client-$VERSION.zip
# Unzip archive
unzip lizmap-web-client-$VERSION.zip
# virtual link for http://localhost/lizmap/
ln -s $LOCATION/lizmap-web-client-$VERSION/lizmap/www/ /var/www/html/lizmap
# Remove archive
rm lizmap-web-client-$VERSION.zip
Configure Lizmap with the database support
Lizmap needs a database to store its own data and to access to data used in your Qgis projects, with its editing tool.
Create profiles.ini.php into lizmap/var/config by copying profiles.ini.php.dist.
cd lizmap/var/config
cp profiles.ini.php.dist profiles.ini.php
cd ../../..
PostgreSQL
For the editing of PostGIS layers in Web Client Lizmap operate, install PostgreSQL support for PHP. No configuration file need to be edited to edit PostgreSQL layer. You must only check that the Lizmap server can access the database with credentials which are stored in the QGIS project (or with a PostgreSQL service file).
apt install php7.4-pgsql
service php7.4-fpm restart
For Lizmap logs, users and groups, it can be either stored in SqLite or PostgreSQL. To store these information in PostgreSQL, follow these instructions.
Into a fresh copy of lizmap/var/config/profiles.ini.php, you should have:
[jdb:jauth]
driver=sqlite3
database="var:db/jauth.db"
[jdb:lizlog]
driver=sqlite3
database="var:db/logs.db"
This is the configuration by default to use Sqlite. You should change these sections to use Postgresql, and indicate several parameters to access to your Postgresql database:
[jdb:jauth]
driver=pgsql
host=localhost
port=5432
database="your_database"
user=my_login
password=my_password
search_path=public
[jdb:lizlog]
driver=pgsql
host=localhost
port=5432
database="your_database"
user=my_login
password=my_password
search_path=public
You can use a specific schema to store lizmap tables. And you may want that lizmap could access to other schema. You then have to set search_path correctly. Example:
search_path=lizmap,my_schema,public
If you have setup a service file for postgresql onto your server, you may want to indicate a postgresql service instead of indicating login, password and so on. Use then the service parameter:
[jdb:jauth]
driver=pgsql
service=my_service
database="your_database"
search_path=lizmap,public
[jdb:lizlog]
driver=pgsql
service=my_service
database="your_database"
search_path=lizmap,public
Spatialite
Enable Spatialite extension
To use editing on layers spatialite,you have to add the spatialite extension in PHP. You can follow these instructions to do so: http://www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/spatialite-cookbook-fr/html/php.html
Lizmap Web Client tests whether the spatialite support is enabled in PHP. If it is not, then spatialite layers will not be used in the editing tool. You can always use PostgreSQL data for editing.
Give the appropriate rights to the directory containing Spatialite databases
So that Lizmap Web Client can modify the data contained in databases Spatialite, we must ensure that the webserver user (www-data) has well write access to the directory containing each Spatialite file
For example, if a directory contains a QGIS project, which uses a Spatialite database placed in a db directory at the same level as the QGIS project:
/path/to/a/lizmap_directory
|--- mon_projet.qgs
|--- bdd
|--- my_spatialite_file.sqlite
So you have to give the rights in this way:
chown :www-data /path/to/a/lizmap_directory -R
chmod 775 /path/to/a/lizmap_directory -R
Note
So if you want to install Lizmap to provide access to multiple map publishers, you should tell them to always create a db directory at the same level as the QGIS projects in the Lizmap Web Client directory. This will facilitate the admin work that just have to change the rights of this unique directory.
Configuring Lizmap and launching the installer
Give the appropriate rights to directories and files
Set rights for Nginx/Apache, so PHP scripts could write some temporary files or do changes.
cd /var/www/lizmap-web-client-$VERSION/
lizmap/install/set_rights.sh www-data www-data
Setup configuration
Create lizmapConfig.ini.php, localconfig.ini.php and edit them
to set parameters specific to your installation. You can modify lizmapConfig.ini.php
to set the url of qgis map server and other things.
cd lizmap/var/config
cp lizmapConfig.ini.php.dist lizmapConfig.ini.php
cp localconfig.ini.php.dist localconfig.ini.php
cd ../../..
Launching the installer
After creating configuration files, you can launch the installer
php lizmap/install/installer.php
It will finished the installation, and will create all SQL tables needed by Lizmap.
Adding some demonstration projects
If you want to test Lizmap with some demonstration projects, you must install unzip and either wget or curl.
lizmap/install/reset.sh --keep-config --demo
First test
For testing launch: http://localhost/lizmap in your browser.
In case you get a 500 - internal server error, run again:
cd /var/www/lizmap-web-client-$VERSION/
lizmap/install/set_rights.sh www-data www-data
Note
Replace localhost with the address or IP number of your server.
In the administration panel, you should check the QGIS server version and the WMS server URL with the URL of QGIS Server.
Warning
Before trying to have a QGIS project working in Lizmap, you must have the communication between QGIS Server and Lizmap Web Client working properly. Versions about QGIS Server plugins must be visible from the administration interface. Please read Lizmap QGIS Server plugin.
If you didn’t install the demo, you can check that you have well installed Lizmap and configured QGIS Server within Lizmap by checking the qgis_server section in this URL:
http://localhost/lizmap/index.php/view/app/metadata
{
"qgis_server":{
"test":"OK",
"mime_type":"text\/xml; charset=utf-8"
}
}
Lizmap is accessible, without further configurations, also as WMS and WFS server from a browser:
and from QGIS:
http://localhost/lizmap/index.php/lizmap/service/?repository=montpellier&project=montpellier&
Note
Access to the WMS and WFS servers can be limited by assigning privileges to specific repositories, see the administration section.
Lizmap modules
Previously, we explained how we could add QGIS Server plugins to add more features to QGIS Server. Now that we have Lizmap Web Client up and running, we can add some Lizmap modules to add again some features.
The list is available in the Lizmap introduction. On their GitHub repository, their is usually their install instructions. You should follow them. However here are the main instructions to install a module.
Installing modules with Composer
You can install modules with Composer, the package manager for PHP. Of course it is possible only if the author of the module has created a package of his module. A such package has a name, for example lizmap/lizmap-pgmetadata-module`. The documentation of the module should indicate it.
You must install Composer. See instructions on its web site http://getcomposer.org.
You must create a composer.json file into lizmap/my-packages/
by copying the composer.json.dist from this directory. And launching
a first time Compose
cp -n lizmap/my-packages/composer.json.dist lizmap/my-packages/composer.json
composer install --working-dir=lizmap/my-packages
Then you can install the package of the module
composer require --working-dir=lizmap/my-packages "lizmap/lizmap-pgmetadata-module"
If you want to install a new version of the module, execute:
composer update --working-dir=lizmap/my-packages
Read the documentation of the module to know if there are additional steps to configure it.
You will have at least to launch the configurator of the module with this command:
php lizmap/install/configurator.php name_of_the_module
# example:
php lizmap/install/configurator.php pgmetadata
To finish the installation, run again the installer of Lizmap:
php lizmap/install/installer.php
lizmap/install/clean_vartmp.sh
lizmap/install/set_rights.sh
installing modules without Composer
To install a module without Composer, retrieve the zip file of the module.
Extract the module into
lizmap/lizmap-modules/. For instance, for the modulePgMetadata:
$ ls -hl lizmap/lizmap-modules/pgmetadata/
total 44K
drwxrwxr-x 2 etienne etienne 4,0K nov. 17 12:38 classes
drwxrwxr-x 2 etienne etienne 4,0K nov. 4 12:50 controllers
drwxrwxr-x 2 etienne etienne 4,0K nov. 4 10:09 daos
-rw-rw-r-- 1 etienne etienne 146 nov. 4 10:38 events.xml
drwxrwxr-x 2 etienne etienne 4,0K nov. 4 10:09 forms
drwxrwxr-x 2 etienne etienne 4,0K nov. 4 12:50 install
drwxrwxr-x 4 etienne etienne 4,0K nov. 4 10:09 locales
-rw-rw-r-- 1 etienne etienne 789 nov. 19 16:02 module.xml
drwxrwxr-x 2 etienne etienne 4,0K nov. 4 10:09 templates
-rw-rw-r-- 1 etienne etienne 106 nov. 4 10:39 urls.xml
drwxrwxr-x 2 etienne etienne 4,0K nov. 17 12:38 www
Read the documentation of the module to know if there are additional steps to configure it.
You will have at least to launch the configurator of the module with this command:
php lizmap/install/configurator.php name_of_the_module
# example:
php lizmap/install/configurator.php pgmetadata
Run the installation :
php lizmap/install/installer.php
lizmap/install/clean_vartmp.sh
lizmap/install/set_rights.sh