Scheduled Import¶

Geofabrik publishes updated OSM extracts daily. Running the importer on a schedule keeps your playground data fresh without manual intervention.

spieli ships systemd unit files in deploy/ for automated weekly imports on Linux servers.

Using the bundled systemd units¶

1. Copy the unit files¶

sudo cp deploy/spieli-import.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo cp deploy/spieli-import.timer   /etc/systemd/system/

2. Configure the service¶

Open /etc/systemd/system/spieli-import.service and set:

WorkingDirectory= — the directory where your compose.prod.yml and .env live (e.g. /opt/spieli)
EnvironmentFile= — path to your .env file (should match WorkingDirectory + /.env)
User= — uncomment and set to the user that owns the deployment directory and is in the docker group

The ExecStart command runs docker compose run --rm importer using whichever DEPLOY_MODE is set in your .env. Both data-node and data-node-ui profiles include the importer container.

3. Configure the timer¶

The default timer (spieli-import.timer) fires weekly on Sunday at 04:00. To change the schedule, edit OnCalendar=:

[Timer]
OnCalendar=Sun 04:00      # weekly, Sunday 4 AM
# OnCalendar=daily         # every day at midnight
# OnCalendar=*-*-* 03:30  # every day at 3:30 AM

See man systemd.time for the full calendar syntax.

4. Enable and start the timer¶

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now spieli-import.timer

Verify:

systemctl status spieli-import.timer
systemctl list-timers spieli-import.timer

5. Test a manual run¶

sudo systemctl start spieli-import.service
journalctl -u spieli-import.service -f

The import typically finishes in 20–30 seconds (PBF cached), or 2–5 minutes on the first run.

How long does an import take?¶

Scenario	Typical duration
First run, PBF not cached	2–5 min (dominated by ~300 MB download)
First run, PBF already cached	30–60 s
Re-run, both filtered PBFs cached	20–30 s

All three files (source PBF, bbox-clipped PBF, tag-filtered PBF) are stored in the pbf_cache Docker volume and reused automatically. Only the final osm2pgsql + api.sql step runs every time.

How fresh is the data?¶

Geofabrik refreshes most regional extracts daily. The importer stores two timestamps in the database:

last_import_at — when the importer script ran (visible via GET /api/rpc/get_meta)
osm_data_timestamp — the osmosis_replication_timestamp header from the source PBF file, which reflects when Geofabrik last generated that extract (can be up to a week old for less-trafficked regions)

Both are surfaced in Monitoring → /federation-status.json.

Without systemd (Docker-based scheduler)¶

If your host does not use systemd, you can schedule imports using the host's cron:

0 4 * * 0 cd /opt/spieli && docker compose -f compose.prod.yml --profile data-node-ui run --rm importer >> /var/log/spieli-import.log 2>&1

Or use a scheduled container (e.g. mcuadros/ofelia) within the Compose stack.