Installation Guide

This guide will hopefully get you set up with Oracle JRE 8, Tomcat 9, GeoServer 2.11.1, and GDAL 2.2 on Ubuntu 16.04 Server.

In my case I am running this tutorial in a VirtualBox VM on IP address 192.168.34.10, you may have a different IP you need to substitute.

Install Java

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install oracle-java8-installer
$ sudo apt install oracle-java8-set-default
$ java -version
java version "1.8.0_144"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_144-b01)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.144-b01, mixed mode)

If there is a hash mismatch error during installation, you have to manually download Java for the installer. URL can be found on Oracle's Java download site. Manual fix below:

$ cd /var/cache/oracle-java8-installer
$ sudo rm jdk-*
$ sudo wget --header "Cookie: oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie" http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u144-b01/090f390dda5b47b9b721c7dfaa008135/jdk-8u144-linux-x64.tar.gz
$ sudo apt install oracle-java8-installer
$ sudo apt install oracle-java8-set-default
$ java -version
java version "1.8.0_144"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_144-b01)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.144-b01, mixed mode)

Install Tomcat9

$ mkdir ~/src
$ cd ~/src
$ wget http://apache.mirror.iweb.ca/tomcat/tomcat-9/v9.0.0.M26/bin/apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M26.tar.gz
$ tar xzf apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M26.tar.gz
$ sudo cp -r apache-tomcat-9.0.0.M26 /opt/tomcat9
$ sudo useradd tomcat9
$ sudo usermod -s /bin/false tomcat9
$ sudo chown -R tomcat9 /opt/tomcat9
$ sudo -u tomcat9 /opt/tomcat9/bin/startup.sh

Tomcat should now be visible at http://192.168.34.10:8080.

Install GDAL

$ sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
$ sudo apt upgrade
$ sudo apt install gdal-bin libgdal-dev libgdal-java libgdal20 gdal-data
$ gdalinfo --version
GDAL 2.2.1, released 2017/06/23

Install GeoServer

$ cd ~/src
$ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/geoserver/files/GeoServer/2.11.1/geoserver-2.11.1-war.zip
$ sudo apt install unzip
$ unzip geoserver-2.11.1-war.zip -d geoserver-2.11.1
$ sudo cp geoserver-2.11.1/geoserver.war /opt/tomcat9/webapps/.
$ sudo chown -R tomcat9 /opt/tomcat9

Geoserver should now be visible at http://192.168.34.10:8080/geoserver/web. The default login is admin with password geoserver.

If you go to Data > Stores and Add new Store, you can see there are no GDAL options yet (e.g. VRT).

Install GeoServer GDAL Plugin

Instructions based on GeoServer documentation, but this should definitely work for Ubuntu. The official guide suggests using ImageIO-Ext 1.1.16 JARs or GDAL binding JARs; we will use the latter. DO NOT install imageio-ext-gdal-bindings-1.9.2.jar in your GeoServer library directory, that is for an older version of GDAL!

$ cd ~/src
$ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/geoserver/files/GeoServer/2.11.1/extensions/geoserver-2.11.1-gdal-plugin.zip
$ unzip geoserver-2.11.1-gdal-plugin.zip -d geoserver-2.11.1-gdal-plugin
$ sudo cp geoserver-2.11.1-gdal-plugin/*.jar /opt/tomcat9/webapps/geoserver/WEB-INF/lib/.
$ sudo cp /usr/share/java/gdal.jar /opt/tomcat9/webapps/geoserver/WEB-INF/lib/.
$ sudo chown -R tomcat9 /opt/tomcat9

At this point GeoServer will see the plugin but will not load it (See About & Status > Server Status, then Modules and look for gs-gdal in the list). We need to set some options for Tomcat to pass to Java and GeoServer.

$ sudo -u tomcat9 /opt/tomcat9/bin/shutdown.sh
$ sudo -u tomcat9 GDAL_DATA=/usr/share/gdal/2.2 JAVA_OPTS="-Djava.library.path=/usr/lib/jni" /opt/tomcat9/bin/startup.sh

Now if you go to the GeoServer main page (important — do not reload the page as it won't show the new settings) and then go to the Modules list, gs-gdal should now have a checkmark and be loaded. Additionally, visiting the New data store page will show the GDAL options.

Author

James Badger (jpbadger@ucalgary.ca)

Some information based on the GeoServer documentation for GDAL raster coverage plugin installation.

License

This tutorial is licensed under CC BY 4.0.