[GRASSLIST:1631] GRASS on Gentoo Linux

[Jeff Hubbs]

Hello -

I'm back on the list after a few months' absence.

I did mange to get GRASS running under Mandrake 9.1 with some
difficulty, but since then I've done a few installations of Gentoo Linux
and I wanted to report my experiences.

Gentoo differs from most Linux distributions in that instead of
installing a large number of binaries, its baseline mode of installation
is to compile every last stitch from source.  This process is controlled
by the "portage" system, which is essentially a re-implementation of the
BSD ports system.  Gentoo Linux does not have an installer; you boot to
a Gentoo LiveCD, get your networking up, set up your drives and
partitions, mount them, and chroot into them to continue the
installation.  The installation instructions guide you through this
process and, in so doing, teaches one a LOT about Linux innards.  

The current version of Gentoo Linux has options that allow you to
shorten the process and even give you a way to install from CDs on a
machine with no Internet connection.  However, if you perform a Stage 1
install, which starts off by laboriously compiling gcc and a few other
things, all of the software gets compiled -O3 with -mcpu and/or -march
set for your system's processor.  There is also an optional procedure
for prelinking.  

The people who run Gentoo Linux or someone else (perhaps someone
associated with GRASS development) created an e-build (a kind of
packaging of source code for the portage system) for GRASS, which means
that you can install GRASS simply by typing one command (and going away
for a while).  All of the required libraries, etc. are automatically
determined and installed in the proper order.

I did this on an Intergraph dual Pentium/133 with 96MB RAM and two SCSI
disk drives, and, at least with the Spearfish data set, it wasn't
horribly sluggy.  The attached screenshot is of my desktop machine with
GRASS' X windows exported from the Intergraph; here, the Intergraph is
acting as a GRASS application server.  The xosview windows is also
coming from the Intergraph - the two CPUs are showing reniced activity
in yellow because the machine is also running SETI at home twice.


- Jeff

-- 
Jeff Hubbs <hbbs at comcast.net>
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