Enterprise Linux GIS

This page gathers links and information about running FLOSS GIS software on Enterprise Linux (shortened EL hereafter) and derivatives, that is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS and Scientific Linux.

EL is a popular and robust platform for servers and computing-heavy workstations, and is therefore a good fit for the specific requirements of GIS.

The mailing list el@lists.osgeo.org is used for communication (with an online archive).

= Useful repositories for GIS software =
 * EPEL is an official Fedora project which repackages many Fedora packages which are not part of the standard EL distribution. It contains quite a few GIS packages and base libraries. Note that one of the rules of the packages maintained in EPEL is that they should never require to change the base EL distribution.
 * ELGIS repository maintains versions of packages which cannot be maintained in EPEL. This is where our packaging effort currently takes place. It requires EPEL to be configured as a repository.
 * PostgreSQL RPM Building Project maintains many versions of the PostgreSQL database as well as PostGIS packages

One goal is also to integrate well with Debian GIS with regards to the versions maintained (see their Packages Thermometer) in order to improve interoperability.

= Packages Status Summary =

Detailed package lists for ELGIS are available here: http://elgis.argeo.org

= How To =

How to enable the ELGIS repository
sudo rpm -Uvh http://elgis.argeo.org/repos/5/elgis-release-5-5_0.noarch.rpm
 * enable the EPEL repository (see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ#howtouse)
 * execute
 * if you want to install QGIS, edit the /etc/yum.repos.d/elgis.repo file and enable the 'elgis-plus'. WARNING: this updates the base distribution

How to hack and locally build the ELGIS packages
For the time being, the ELGIS packages (that is, those not maintained by EPEL) are versioned by and distributed through argeo.org.

You can see the currently versioned packages here:


 * Testing
 * ELGIS : https://projects.argeo.org/elgis/svn/factory/trunk/rpmbuild/elgis
 * ELGIS Plus: https://projects.argeo.org/elgis/svn/factory/trunk/rpmbuild/elgis-plus
 * Stable
 * ELGIS: https://projects.argeo.org/elgis/svn/factory/branches/5-stable/rpmbuild/elgis
 * ELGIS Plus: https://projects.argeo.org/elgis/svn/factory/branches/5-stable/rpmbuild/elgis-plus

Note: simply accept the self-signed certificate

You can checkout all the packages: svn co https://projects.argeo.org/elgis/svn/factory/trunk/rpmbuild rpms

Or one by one, for example: svn co https://projects.argeo.org/elgis/svn/factory/trunk/rpmbuild/elgis/gdal gdal

Each package directory follows the directory structure expected by rpmbuild (see how to set an rpmbuild environment).

We version only the spec files (under /SPECS/ .spec) and the patches or some light sources (under /SOURCES). The source packages of the underlying libraries needs to be downloaded in the SOURCES directory.

Please send patches to the spec files to the el@lists.osgeo.org mailing-list.

In order to actually build, you can then configure %_topdir in your ~/.rpmmacros file to point to where you checked out a package, for example:

%_topdir %(echo $HOME)/dev/rpmbuild %rhel 5 %packager Mathieu Baudier  %dist .el5.elgis

A more persistent alternative is to have the two following files in each package directory:

include: /usr/lib/rpm/rpmrc macrofiles: /usr/lib/rpm/macros:/usr/lib/rpm/ia32e-linux/macros:/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/macros:/etc/rpm/macros.*:/etc/rpm/macros:/etc/rpm/ia32e-linux/macros:~/.rpmmacros: /rpmmacros (note the ': /rpmmacros' appended at the end of the macrofiles line)
 * /rpmrc

%_topdir %rhel 5 %packager Mathieu Baudier  %dist .el5.argeo
 * /rpmmacros

And then call rpmbuild as follow cd rpmbuild --rcfile=rpmrc -ba SPECS/ .spec

These two files are registered in svn:ignore and can typically be automatically generated by scripts or a build framework.

= Historical Reference =
 * August 2010 - Announcement of the ELGIS repositories: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/el/2010-August/000018.html
 * May/June 2010 - Original mails suggesting to coordinate EL GIS through OSGeo and describing the rationale and the approach
 * On the Live GIS CD mailing-list: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/live-demo/2010-May/001724.html
 * On the Discuss mailing list: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2010-June/007231.html