Unbuntu Troubleshooting
WARNING: These instructions below are listed for historical reasons, and will only work with TileMill v0.10.1 or earlier.
If TileMill isn’t starting up or performing properly, try these troubleshooting steps. This page is for Ubuntu. We also have instructions for Mac OS X and Windows.
Update or reinstall TileMill
Some problems can be fixed by downloading a fresh copy of TileMill and installing again. Open the Terminal and enter the following command to do so.
sudo apt-get install tilemill
Reset configuration and plugins
This will reset any customizations you have made to TileMill preferences and will remove any TileMill plugins you have installed.
- Quit TileMill.
- Open the Terminal, type
cd ~/.tilemill
, and press enter. -
Remove the
config.json
file and thenode_modules
folder by entering the following commands:mv config.json config.json.backup mv node_modules node_modules.backup
Remove projects and data cache
- Quit TileMill.
- Open your
Documents
directory in the file manager. - Rename the
MapBox
folder toMapBox-backup
to backup your projects. - Start TileMill again and a fresh
MapBox
directory should be created. If the application now behaves properly, copy theproject
folder fromMapBox-backup
to the newly createdMapBox
folder to restore your projects. - If the problem returns after restoring your projects, check the logs and contact support.
Remove old Mapnik version or other Mapnik PPA
TileMill depends on a custom Mapnik build that sits beside TileMill in its Ubuntu PPA. If you have any other version of Mapnik installed this will prevent TileMill from working properly (unless you have built TileMill from source).
See the version of Mapnik you have installed by doing:
apt-cache policy libmapnik
The installed version should match the name of the Mapnik package at the TileMill PPA.
Check the logs
- Open the Terminal, type
tail -2000 ~/.tilemill.log
, and press enter. - Copy the log contents and paste it into a gist to share it with support staff.