Build my own off-line map server?

Question

I am new to GIS and I am trying to deploy my own off-line map server. I have found very interesting open source tools like: geoserver. I have downloaded OpenStreetMap data from geofabrik.de

In the packages I downloaded from geofabrik we find different layers with diffrent information: landuse, natural, places, railways ... but not the base map i.e: the geographic map with country border and no other information.

My question is: How can I get (download) this base map layer in order to use it off-line?

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

I had exactly the same project recently. I tried several world maps (CloudMate, NaturalEarth) to put under geofabrik extractions. Most of them didn't have enough resolution to display properly on higher zoom levels.

Finally, I found ThinkGeo extractions. It contains a "complete world landmass polygons" layer, which is good enough for a background layer on any zoom levels. It turned out that ThinkGeo extractions for separate countries contain country borders and have higher quality than geofabrik. (I experienced missing objects with geofabrik.)

So I came up a solution displaying the landmass layer, and some of the countries depending on the focus of the project.

I'd recommend you to try ThinkGeo. They do weekly update on data.