Running grass through Xwindows on a Solaris Server?

GRASS GRASS user
1

Hello, List-

I was if is possible to run GRASS through X-windows on a NT workstation if GRASS is installed on a remote Solaris server? In theory, we would like to allow multiple users to access GRASS, or would it be restricted to one person usage? My Department would like to take advantage of the simulation models in GRASS for an Advanced Environmental Modeling GIS course.

Any recommendations or suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

Sincerely,
Rob Britts

Plese feel free to contact me off list at rbritts@ufl.edu
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2

Yes, I've done it. You need an X-window server for your NTs, and I'd
suggest you give starnet
http://www.starnet.com/
a try. They have a demo version (works for 2
hours) for free, but if you like it you can go ahead and buy the real
thing pretty cheaply. I got my stand-alone version for around $100.

Once you have the X-window server up, it works just as if everyone were
working on UNIX workstations, so the same capability for multiple users is
available.

Andy

On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Rob Britts wrote:

Hello, List-

I was if is possible to run GRASS through X-windows on a NT workstation if
GRASS is installed on a remote Solaris server? In theory, we would like to
allow multiple users to access GRASS, or would it be restricted to one
person usage? My Department would like to take advantage of the simulation
models in GRASS for an Advanced Environmental Modeling GIS course.

Any recommendations or suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

Sincerely,
Rob Britts

Plese feel free to contact me off list at rbritts@ufl.edu
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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http://profiles.msn.com.

3

Hi Rob,

GRASS will run fine in an Xwindows emulator package. We have setup
sites with Hummingbird and Xvision. You can take advantage of all the
GRASS functionality, including the tcl/tk interface. LEt me know if you
need help with your setup.

Bruce

Rob Britts wrote:

Hello, List-

I was if is possible to run GRASS through X-windows on a NT workstation if
GRASS is installed on a remote Solaris server? In theory, we would like to
allow multiple users to access GRASS, or would it be restricted to one
person usage? My Department would like to take advantage of the simulation
models in GRASS for an Advanced Environmental Modeling GIS course.

Any recommendations or suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

Sincerely,
Rob Britts

Plese feel free to contact me off list at rbritts@ufl.edu
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.

4

(anyone please correct me if the following is not correct!)
Rob,
Like the other responses, I would say that this presents no problems. We
have used Hummingbird's eXceedNT in the past, and currently
use StatNet's X-Win32 (they have a good multi-license discount) in
conjunction with the Tera Term terminal emulator (freebie, I think, nice
UNIX to Windows compatibility).

However, to the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to run the NVIZ
module through these products. The problem is that X-Windows is a
client-side product, and the Mesa graphics library necessary for the
NVIZ graphics would therefore have to be on the client. I don't know of
a way to do this with an X emulator. That's the only limitation to using
GRASS in this manner that I know of.

Cheers,
  -Malcolm Williamson
   CAST - University of Arkansas

Rob Britts wrote:

Hello, List-

I was if is possible to run GRASS through X-windows on a NT workstation if
GRASS is installed on a remote Solaris server? In theory, we would like to
allow multiple users to access GRASS, or would it be restricted to one
person usage? My Department would like to take advantage of the simulation
models in GRASS for an Advanced Environmental Modeling GIS course.

Any recommendations or suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

Sincerely,
Rob Britts

Plese feel free to contact me off list at rbritts@ufl.edu
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.

5

Hi guys
With respect to GRASS through a PC XSERVER this is how we have it set up

We moved away from XVision to Goglobal because of cost differences and in my
opinion there is a real speed increase in the display time using goglobsal
verses xvision.

I have been running Grass across a t-1 line for several hours and found it
just slightly slower than a local machine.
My station and the server were 450 km a part.

The only unquie thing we had to do was setting golgobal host on the sun to
use XDM so that we could choose which desktop we wanted.
Grass works best with openwindows verses CDE. In CDE the colours go wacko
when displaying a map. ( I know its colour map problem)

The other part would be that each student would need to have there own login
so that the grass single user lock can be worked around.

-----Original Message-----
From: Malcolm Williamson [mailto:malcolm@cast.uark.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 12:08 PM
To: Rob Britts
Cc: GRASSLIST@baylor.edu
Subject: Re: Running grass through Xwindows on a Solaris Server?

(anyone please correct me if the following is not correct!)
Rob,
Like the other responses, I would say that this presents no problems. We
have used Hummingbird's eXceedNT in the past, and currently
use StatNet's X-Win32 (they have a good multi-license discount) in
conjunction with the Tera Term terminal emulator (freebie, I think, nice
UNIX to Windows compatibility).

However, to the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to run the NVIZ
module through these products. The problem is that X-Windows is a
client-side product, and the Mesa graphics library necessary for the
NVIZ graphics would therefore have to be on the client. I don't know of
a way to do this with an X emulator. That's the only limitation to using
GRASS in this manner that I know of.

Cheers,
  -Malcolm Williamson
   CAST - University of Arkansas

Rob Britts wrote:

Hello, List-

I was if is possible to run GRASS through X-windows on a NT workstation if
GRASS is installed on a remote Solaris server? In theory, we would like

to

allow multiple users to access GRASS, or would it be restricted to one
person usage? My Department would like to take advantage of the

simulation

models in GRASS for an Advanced Environmental Modeling GIS course.

Any recommendations or suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

Sincerely,
Rob Britts

Plese feel free to contact me off list at rbritts@ufl.edu
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.

6

Malcolm Williamson wrote:

However, to the best of my knowledge, it is not possible to run the NVIZ
module through these products. The problem is that X-Windows is a
client-side product, and the Mesa graphics library necessary for the
NVIZ graphics would therefore have to be on the client. I don't know of
a way to do this with an X emulator. That's the only limitation to using
GRASS in this manner that I know of.

Indeed it is possible to run/display NVIZ remotely. You need the
MesaGL software rendering libraries on the machine on which NVIZ
is run. The MesaGL software renderer takes OpenGL calls, and
turns them into "straight" X calls. I do this at home once in a
while. You may need to perform LD_PRELOAD hackery with a
symbolically linked libGL.so -> libMesaGL.so in order to bypass
the system OpenGL libraries (which may be optimized for direct
rendering, or implemented via the GLX extension to X).

Cheers,
        -Malcolm Williamson
         CAST - University of Arkansas

Rob Britts wrote:
>
> Hello, List-
>
> I was if is possible to run GRASS through X-windows on a NT workstation if
> GRASS is installed on a remote Solaris server? In theory, we would like to
> allow multiple users to access GRASS, or would it be restricted to one
> person usage? My Department would like to take advantage of the simulation
> models in GRASS for an Advanced Environmental Modeling GIS course.
>
> Any recommendations or suggestions would greatly be appreciated.
>
> Sincerely,
> Rob Britts
>
> Plese feel free to contact me off list at rbritts@ufl.edu
> _________________________________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
>
> Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
> http://profiles.msn.com.

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