[GRASS-user] GIS course on a live-cd (was Basic GIS course ideas)

GRASS GRASS user
,
1

Hi GRASS/QGIS users,

I really appreciate all your insights, it is very encouraging.

Let me just share a few things about our department in the college, we
are really a very small department and faciliites are really
insufficient. We usually borrow computer labs in other departments to
do GIS exercises.

Last term, we were able to exclusively use the accounting lab for our
sessions because nobody is using it. They bought the computers early
on not realizing that the accounting software they will be buying
costs a few thousand dollars for each license. Talk about classic
foss/propriety scenario.

This term, we may not be able to use a lab exclusively for GIS, we are
expected to share lab work with advertising, IT, english, etc. courses
(as expected its on Windows). My experience with a lab that is used
by a number courses and not properly maintained is really frustrating,
I ended up cleaning the units with viruses and other nuisances before
even starting my sessions.

I am exploring of maybe using a live-cd (the laussane CDs maybe the
latest) for my sessions in this way we can conduct lessons to any lab
without the installation, configuration, permission problems and other
usual windows maintanance nightmares.

I know its a good idea for demos and short exercises. How about using
live-cds for a one semester course?

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Maning

PS. On the issue of lab facilities, I hope to resolve in the medium
term. I am still negotiating maybe look for funding to set-up a GIS
lab for our department.

On 10/8/06, Rudolf Maurer <rudolf.maurer@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hi all!

I studied at the department of geology at the university of Freiburg, Germany.
There since maybe 1999 +/- GRASS is taught once a year in courses as mandatory.

In my personal course I can confirm: The jump to Linux-Commandline is
hard for most people and defocuses a bit away from GIS. (Anyway it is
a good thing to learn!)

GRASS on Win is a good point, that helps. Eventhough my experience on
my WinXP-Laptop I need to use for work is not tremendous (without
Postgres i was not able to generate a location).

Recent German pages here:
http://www.geologie.uni-freiburg.de/root/projekte/grass/sommer2006/kurslinks.html
Many other material there is way outdated, but shows some activities
in the past.

Good data-material also helps a lot, i.e. when you have local data and
current problem-examples.

Bye
Rudy

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http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser

--
|---------|----------------------------------------------------------|
| __.-._ |"Ohhh. Great warrior. Wars not make one great." -Yoda |
| '-._"7' |"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all" -N.Branden|
| /'.-c |Linux registered user #402901, http://counter.li.org/ |
| | /T |http://esambale.wikispaces.com|
| _)_/LI |http://www.geocities.com/esambale/philbiodivmap/philbirds.html |
|---------|----------------------------------------------------------|

2

maning sambale wrote:
[live-CD GIS]

I know its a good idea for demos and short exercises. How about using
live-cds for a one semester course?

Any ideas?

You'll need an easy to access central file server, with an account set
up for each student.

If you can create a custom live CD you can auto-connect to the read-only
data server and prompt the student for id/pass when they click on a
"my data" icon [calling `smbmount`] on the desktop.

simple samba server + smbfs? pmount?

Hamish

3

Hi,

On Sun, 8 Oct 2006 01:59:14 -0300
Tim Sutton <tim@linfiniti.com> wrote:

Hi

On 08/10/2006, at 01:30, maning sambale wrote:

> Hi GRASS/QGIS users,
>
> I really appreciate all your insights, it is very encouraging.
>
> Let me just share a few things about our department in the college, we
> are really a very small department and faciliites are really
> insufficient. We usually borrow computer labs in other departments to
> do GIS exercises.
>
> Last term, we were able to exclusively use the accounting lab for our
> sessions because nobody is using it. They bought the computers early
> on not realizing that the accounting software they will be buying
> costs a few thousand dollars for each license. Talk about classic
> foss/propriety scenario.
>

Oh? Introduce them to GnuCash - its a really good open source
accounting package. http://www.gnucash.org/

> This term, we may not be able to use a lab exclusively for GIS, we are
> expected to share lab work with advertising, IT, english, etc. courses
> (as expected its on Windows). My experience with a lab that is used
> by a number courses and not properly maintained is really frustrating,
> I ended up cleaning the units with viruses and other nuisances before
> even starting my sessions.
>
> I am exploring of maybe using a live-cd (the laussane CDs maybe the
> latest) for my sessions in this way we can conduct lessons to any lab
> without the installation, configuration, permission problems and other
> usual windows maintanance nightmares.
>
> I know its a good idea for demos and short exercises. How about using
> live-cds for a one semester course?
>

I have been in contact with several people who have prepared or are
in the process of preparing coursework materials for QGIS and QGIS/
GRASS. I'm thinking that it would be really good to get some kind of
forum for collaboration between educators working with QGIS so that
you dont duplicate effort. Perhaps a qgis-edu mailing list? Or an
area on the wiki? Or a thread on the forum? Or all of the above? I'd
be interested to hear any feedback. In the meantime you might be
interested in the work being carried out by Gary Watry and co:

I would second to have a qgis-edu mailing list and maybe also a wiki
EducationCorner.

Would it make sense to combine GRASS and QGIS in this context? Or
would it be better to creaete an own GRASS education wiki page and/or
mailinglist for people teaching GRASS without QGIS?

Probably it needs to be seperate? Infrastructure problems (liveCDs, server, ...)
might be similar, but course structure and contents would be different if you
look at it from QGIS or GRASS side...

regards,
  Otto

http://indianocean.coaps.fsu.edu/FOSS_GIS/Quantum_GIS.pdf

They are currently revising the document to produce a more up to date
version.

> Any ideas?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Maning
>
> PS. On the issue of lab facilities, I hope to resolve in the medium
> term. I am still negotiating maybe look for funding to set-up a GIS
> lab for our department.

One cost effective way to go is to use something like the LTSP (Linux
Terminal Server Project) - it should be quite cheap to get a bunch of
low end pcs to use as dumb terminals. You can remove all the moving
parts so they will run quitely and reliably and will be fairly tamper
proof. You just need one fairly well specified machine for the LTSP
server and a local area network. Previously I have done even more low
tech way which is to run and XDMCP server on the server and use
knoppix live cd on the client and to run XDM chooser to log in to the
server from the clients. This way takes less technical knowledge than
a full LTSP solution and will still allow you to get a lab underway
very very cheaply.

Regards

Tim

>
> On 10/8/06, Rudolf Maurer <rudolf.maurer@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all!
>>
>> I studied at the department of geology at the university of
>> Freiburg, Germany.
>> There since maybe 1999 +/- GRASS is taught once a year in courses
>> as mandatory.
>>
>> In my personal course I can confirm: The jump to Linux-Commandline is
>> hard for most people and defocuses a bit away from GIS. (Anyway it is
>> a good thing to learn!)
>>
>> GRASS on Win is a good point, that helps. Eventhough my experience on
>> my WinXP-Laptop I need to use for work is not tremendous (without
>> Postgres i was not able to generate a location).
>>
>> Recent German pages here:
>> http://www.geologie.uni-freiburg.de/root/projekte/grass/sommer2006/
>> kurslinks.html
>> Many other material there is way outdated, but shows some activities
>> in the past.
>>
>> Good data-material also helps a lot, i.e. when you have local data
>> and
>> current problem-examples.
>>
>> Bye
>> Rudy
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> grassuser mailing list
>> grassuser@grass.itc.it
>> http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser
>>
>
>
> --
> |---------|----------------------------------------------------------|
> | __.-._ |"Ohhh. Great warrior. Wars not make one great." -Yoda |
> | '-._"7' |"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all" -N.Branden|
> | /'.-c |Linux registered user #402901, http://counter.li.org/ |
> | | /T |http://esambale.wikispaces.com|
> | _)_/LI |http://www.geocities.com/esambale/philbiodivmap/
> philbirds.html |
> |---------|----------------------------------------------------------|
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-user mailing list
> Qgis-user@lists.qgis.org
> http://lists.qgis.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user

--

4

Hi!

I can understand => I was a student-job in charge of the lab and
department computers...
We were lucky having an excellent expert in the central university's
computing facility who set up a campus-wide system of a linux-system
booting via network. This could be substituted by any live-cd
(hopefully).
When booting the linux-via-net-PCs mounted a nfs-share and set PATH
and maybe other environment variables (can't recall now, I also can't
remember if it was GRASS 5.4 or 6.0 more likely the last).
Then the students just typed grass in a terminal and where mainly
done. All GRASS-related files like locations and mapsets where stored
on the nfs-server.

This worked after some minor issues rather smoothly, but you depend on
your proper nfs-file-server.
Maybe someone knows a better way than nfs to connect the workstations
to the fileserver.

I personally would love to have a recent bootable live-linux-distro on
a big USB-flashdrive. Then install grass and be happy. I did not
manage to find any live-Distro which would be able to function with
most pcs. Ideas/Hints ?

ArcheOS is a live-distro done by archeologists featuring lots of
GIS-related software:
http://www.arc-team.com/archeos/about.html
Did not yet try it...

So long
Rudy

2006/10/8, maning sambale <emmanuel.sambale@gmail.com>:

Hi GRASS/QGIS users,

I really appreciate all your insights, it is very encouraging.

Let me just share a few things about our department in the college, we
are really a very small department and faciliites are really
insufficient. We usually borrow computer labs in other departments to
do GIS exercises.

Last term, we were able to exclusively use the accounting lab for our
sessions because nobody is using it. They bought the computers early
on not realizing that the accounting software they will be buying
costs a few thousand dollars for each license. Talk about classic
foss/propriety scenario.

This term, we may not be able to use a lab exclusively for GIS, we are
expected to share lab work with advertising, IT, english, etc. courses
(as expected its on Windows). My experience with a lab that is used
by a number courses and not properly maintained is really frustrating,
I ended up cleaning the units with viruses and other nuisances before
even starting my sessions.

I am exploring of maybe using a live-cd (the laussane CDs maybe the
latest) for my sessions in this way we can conduct lessons to any lab
without the installation, configuration, permission problems and other
usual windows maintanance nightmares.

I know its a good idea for demos and short exercises. How about using
live-cds for a one semester course?

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Maning

PS. On the issue of lab facilities, I hope to resolve in the medium
term. I am still negotiating maybe look for funding to set-up a GIS
lab for our department.

On 10/8/06, Rudolf Maurer <rudolf.maurer@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I studied at the department of geology at the university of Freiburg, Germany.
> There since maybe 1999 +/- GRASS is taught once a year in courses as mandatory.
>
> In my personal course I can confirm: The jump to Linux-Commandline is
> hard for most people and defocuses a bit away from GIS. (Anyway it is
> a good thing to learn!)
>
> GRASS on Win is a good point, that helps. Eventhough my experience on
> my WinXP-Laptop I need to use for work is not tremendous (without
> Postgres i was not able to generate a location).
>
> Recent German pages here:
> http://www.geologie.uni-freiburg.de/root/projekte/grass/sommer2006/kurslinks.html
> Many other material there is way outdated, but shows some activities
> in the past.
>
> Good data-material also helps a lot, i.e. when you have local data and
> current problem-examples.
>
> Bye
> Rudy
>
> _______________________________________________
> grassuser mailing list
> grassuser@grass.itc.it
> http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser
>

--
|---------|----------------------------------------------------------|
| __.-._ |"Ohhh. Great warrior. Wars not make one great." -Yoda |
| '-._"7' |"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all" -N.Branden|
| /'.-c |Linux registered user #402901, http://counter.li.org/ |
| | /T |http://esambale.wikispaces.com|
| _)_/LI |http://www.geocities.com/esambale/philbiodivmap/philbirds.html |
|---------|----------------------------------------------------------|

_______________________________________________
grassuser mailing list
grassuser@grass.itc.it
http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser