Unable to convert to SQLite

[tfachada]

I am trying to convert an existing nominatim PostgreSQL database to SQLite for use on a weaker machine, and, upon running the command sudo -u nominatim nominatim convert -o nominatim-aml.sqlite, I am getting the following vague error:

sqlalchemy.exc.OperationalError: (sqlite3.OperationalError) unable to open database file

This happens even though the nominatim database is indeed initialized and running on my testing machine. I can't find the background for this error, so I'd like to know what could be causing this and what extra steps need to be taken.

The Nominatim version is 4.5, and I'm running an Ubuntu 24.04 docker image. I followed the instructions available here, except libspatialite7 no longer exists and aiosqlite via pip doesn't get detected, so I installed through apt the packages libspatialite8t64, libspatialite-dev and python3-aiosqlite instead.

[otbutz]

Is the nominatim user able to create the sqlite database file in the current directory? Because that would explain the error message.

[tfachada]

Indeed. Though I have another issue now.

I think I did try to do that on /home/nominatim before, but it didn't work that time, probably because I hadn't installed all the dependencies. Sorry about that.

That being said, I have copied the SQLite database file out of the container, and put it into a project folder alongside a .env which content is NOMINATIM_DATABASE_DSN=sqlite:dbname=nominatim-aml.sqlite, and ran nominatim serve --engine falcon on the folder with the virtual environment turned on, and it is serving. However, I get an HTTP 500 error for every request I make on the browser or with geopy. Is there any step I might have missed?

[otbutz]

With venv you should also be able to directly invoke the executables. e.g ./venv/bin/nominatim

[tfachada]

The commands

sudo -u nominatim ../venv/bin/nominatim serve

and

sudo -u nominatim ../venv/bin/nominatim search --query [...]

still fail, because

sudo: unable to execute ../venv/bin/nominatim: Permission denied

I have tried sudo chown -R nominatim:nominatim venv on the folder where venv is located, but it has had no effect.

[tfachada]

I tried installing nominatim from the package repository and, running the command with sudo -u nominatim, I am still unable to get search to work, with or without webserver, and in the folder where the SQLite database is. As always, OperationalError.

Working with the only functional thing that I have, which are the SQL queries on the database, is there any way I can reimplement from there a way to reverse-geocode? That is really the only thing that I need...

[tfachada]

@mtmail @otbutz Posting another reply in case you can answer this question but missed it due to the weekend.

Working with the only functional thing that I have, which are the SQL queries on the database, is there any way I can reimplement from there a way to reverse-geocode? That is really the only thing that I need...

[lonvia]

Working with the only functional thing that I have, which are the SQL queries on the database, is there any way I can reimplement from there a way to reverse-geocode? That is really the only thing that I need...

Questions along the line of "How do I implement my own geocoder when I fail to install Nominatim" is out of scope for this discussion forum.

[otbutz]

aiosqlite via pip doesn't get detected

https://pypi.org/project/aiosqlite/ ?

[tfachada]

Yes.