On 15-Oct-2009, at 09:45 , Andrew Davidson wrote:
Can you direct this query to someone who might be able to answer it?
From: John Caudill[SMTP:JOHNCATLGEO@BELLSOUTH.NET]
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 4:18:40 PM
To: Davidson, Andrew
Subject: GRASS 6.4 QuestionsDear Mr. Davidson:
Your the only email I can find for GRASS questions. I just downloaded
version 6.4. I can’t get it to open any data set. I may have
downloaded the Spearfish data wrong? or its in the wrong file or
whatever. When I hit the Welcome button, I can only get a blank screen
with the display page with the icons at the top. On the next “page” I
can find no place where I can download a map layer… anywhere. None
of the tutorials show how to call up the data. I must be doing
something very wrong.HELP
John Caudill, PE the DATABASE
Atlantic Geoscience, Inc.
Watkinsville, GA
Hi, John,
The best address for general GRASS help is the GRASS User’s mailing list - see
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user
for instructions on how to read archives, post, and sign up.
As a start towards your problem, however, I can offer the following (you haven’t said what operating system you’re using, so the tips here are somewhat generic):
This first database selection step does confuse many new users. You need to expand the Spearfish data archive first, if you haven’t already - it can’t still be in the .zip or .tar.gz file that you received it in. How you do this expansion step depends on your operating system, but on most modern machines just double clicking on it will at least offer some alternative. This should result in an expanded directory structure being extracted, all under a top level directory called spearfish60. Then back in the GRASS startup, the DATABASE is the directory under which you stored that expanded directory, the LOCATION in this case would be spearfish60, and you have the choice of PERMANENT or user1 for the MAPSET, and user1 is the recommended choice.
One place, among others, to see an explanation of what these parameters are referring to is the web page at:
http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/manuals/html64_user/helptext.html
I hope that helps, if not please follow up on the GRASS users mailing list.
Scott Mitchell