[GRASS-user] Questions Re. Grass63 and Fedora 13

GRASS GRASS user
1

Hullo All,
I am back again, after many years away from GIS and Grass.

I have installed Grass 6.3 (from the fedora repository) on a fedora 13 x86_64 system. I would have liked to have tried 6.4 but at this stage no one has a 6.4 package available for fc13 and I avoid installing anything unless it is via the package manager.

I have yet to get back up to speed, but my initial experiences using the North Carolina sample dataset, indicate that there may be some display problems with my installation. Raster display is incredibly slow. I was seeing Much faster rendering of raster maps back in the days of Grass3 and Grass4.
Is this a known issue with 6.3, or the fedora package?

I have some datasets from Grass4 and Grass5, and have tried to access them but Grass63 doesn't appear to recognise them as legitimate datasets. Can someone please point me to advice on how I might access this data?

Well done to all who help with the Grass development.

Cheers
--
Regards,
Terry Duell

2

Hi Terry,

I have installed Grass 6.3 (from the fedora repository) on
a fedora 13 x86_64 system. I would have liked to have tried
6.4 but at this stage no one has a 6.4 package available for
fc13 and I avoid installing anything unless it is via the
package manager.

for what it's worth, if built from source all of grass lives
in one directory, with only a small wrapper startup script
written to /usr/local/bin/. So it's not a source of too much
filesystem clutter and easy to clean up. It could even live in
your home dir.

6.4 is well worth the trouble of the upgrade..

I have yet to get back up to speed, but my initial
experiences using the North Carolina sample dataset,
indicate that there may be some display problems with my
installation. Raster display is incredibly slow. I was
seeing Much faster rendering of raster maps back in the days
of Grass3 and Grass4.
Is this a known issue with 6.3, or the fedora package?

probably your region resolution is set too fine. try 'g.region
rast=map_of_interest -p'. try to keep things under 40000x40000,
but for just looking at it on a monitor anything more than the
display (say 1500x1200) is just going to slow you down.

I have some datasets from Grass4 and Grass5, and have tried
to access them but Grass63 doesn't appear to recognise them
as legitimate datasets. Can someone please point me to
advice on how I might access this data?

In GRASS 6 the vector engine was replaced with a much more
powerful version, and the format changed with it. There's a
v.convert.all module which will convert all the old format
vector maps to GRASS 6 format.

Old point data (sites) have joined vector data now, use the
v.in.sites.all modules to convert them. (or without the ".all"
to just bring one map in)

raster maps should still work as before.

Well done to all who help with the Grass development.

cheers and I hope you enjoy all the new improvements,

Hamish

3

Hullo Hamish,

On Sun, 03 Oct 2010 13:03:32 +1100, Hamish <hamish_b@yahoo.com> wrote:

[snip]

for what it's worth, if built from source all of grass lives
in one directory, with only a small wrapper startup script
written to /usr/local/bin/. So it's not a source of too much
filesystem clutter and easy to clean up. It could even live in
your home dir.

6.4 is well worth the trouble of the upgrade..

OK, thanks for that advice.
I'll have a look a build from source and see how I go.

Raster display is incredibly slow.

probably your region resolution is set too fine. try 'g.region
rast=map_of_interest -p'. try to keep things under 40000x40000,
but for just looking at it on a monitor anything more than the
display (say 1500x1200) is just going to slow you down.

OK, I hadn't thought of that...been away too long.

I have some datasets from Grass4 and Grass5, and have tried
to access them but Grass63 doesn't appear to recognise them
as legitimate datasets.

In GRASS 6 the vector engine was replaced with a much more
powerful version, and the format changed with it. There's a
v.convert.all module which will convert all the old format
vector maps to GRASS 6 format.

Old point data (sites) have joined vector data now, use the
v.in.sites.all modules to convert them. (or without the ".all"
to just bring one map in)

raster maps should still work as before.

The thing is that Grass63 doesn't see anything when I point it at the old dataset directory, so none of the mapsets are available.
I will try a build of Grass64 and if the problem persists I will start a new thread with a bit more detail.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,
--
Regards,
Terry Duell

4

Terry wrote:

The thing is that Grass63 doesn't see anything when I point
it at the old dataset directory, so none of the mapsets are
available.

is your current user account the filesystem owner of the mapsets?
if it's on an external drive you have to make sure that the
drive gets mounted as your user.

(a condition of keeping the peace in a collaborative multi-user
architecture which spills over into single-user installs)

you can read from anyone else's mapset, but only modify (and
thus open) your own.

Hamish

5

Hullo Hamish,

On Sun, 03 Oct 2010 14:41:01 +1100, Hamish <hamish_b@yahoo.com> wrote:

Terry wrote:

The thing is that Grass63 doesn't see anything when I point
it at the old dataset directory, so none of the mapsets are
available.

is your current user account the filesystem owner of the mapsets?

Yes. Both the NC sample data dir and my old data dir are on the same drive and owned by me. Grass63 (and now Grass64) both see the NC sample dataset but not my old dataset. Curiously, if I select the old dataset dir and try to create a new location with the name of the existing location, Grass complains that it can't do so as "...location already exists", but it won't show it in the startup window.

I will leave this percolate for a while and hopefully see another way of looking at the problem.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,
--
Regards,
Terry Duell

6

> Terry wrote:
>> The thing is that Grass63 doesn't see anything when I point
>> it at the old dataset directory, so none of the mapsets are
>> available.

Hamish:

> is your current user account the filesystem owner of the mapsets?

Terry:

Yes. Both the NC sample data dir and my old data dir are on
the same drive and owned by me. Grass63 (and now Grass64)
both see the NC sample dataset but not my old dataset.
Curiously, if I select the old dataset dir and try to create
a new location with the name of the existing location, Grass
complains that it can't do so as "...location already
exists", but it won't show it in the startup window.

I will leave this percolate for a while and hopefully see
another way of looking at the problem.

has it passed through a removable hard drive though? sometimes
if one of those uses FAT32 it can lowercase all the filenames,
and then the program can't find PERMANENT, WIND, PROJ_INFO files,
etc. due to case sensitivity.

Hamish

7

Hullo Hamish,

On Sun, 03 Oct 2010 15:59:40 +1100, Hamish <hamish_b@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Terry wrote:
>> The thing is that Grass63 doesn't see anything when I point
>> it at the old dataset directory, so none of the mapsets are
>> available.

[snip]

has it passed through a removable hard drive though? sometimes
if one of those uses FAT32 it can lowercase all the filenames,
and then the program can't find PERMANENT, WIND, PROJ_INFO files,
etc. due to case sensitivity.

I had just solved the problem and was running through some of my new found maps when your message arrived. My next task was to post a "solved" message!

I can't remember the circuitous path that this old data has travelled, but it was a lowercase issue, and now fixed.
Many moons ago I think that sort of detail was almost automatically checked, but having been away for so long much has faded...but being rapidly refreshed!

Many thanks for your help.

Cheers,
--
Regards,
Terry Duell