For the new EduGIS webmapping client we are using mapbuilder 1.5, openlayers 2.6 and TileCache 2.0.1. We have around 30 layers containing data for the Netherlands. To seed the tilecache for these layers takes quite some time, especially if you do not give the proper bounding box.
Tilecache_seed.py, the simple seeding client that comes with TileCache, takes the following parameters:
tilecache_seed.py <url> <layer> [<zoom start> <zoom stop> [<bbox>]]
The url parameter apparently doesn’t matter, it just uses local python. The layer is the layer you want to seed. Optionally you can limit the number of zoomlevels which you want to tile and the bbox of the area to be tiled. If you leave these out it will default to the entire world and all zoomlevels.
For .nl in google-projection I’ve used these parameters:
python.exe tilecache_seed.py "http://url.to.tilecache/TileCache.py?" layer 1 18 "350988,6571138,827965,7133714"
This will generate 2870400 tiles on zoomlevel 18 and it takes some time (think days). It is probably more useful to seed until level 17 or maybe even 16 and tile everything else on the fly.