[GRASSLIST:1262] permissions

[Roger S. Miller]

Folks,

In my original grass5beta7 installation (on a Linux box with ext2 file
system) I created a special user "gis" who owned the installation and
grass database. Anyone using the installation had to log in as "gis" or
they had no access to the data.  That caused a few annoying problems.

In my new grass5beta10 installation I retained "gis" as the owner of the
database, located the entire database under /home/gis and gave
read/write/execute access to group "gis". The way I think this should work
is that a user (me, for instance) should be able to use newgrp to place
themselves in the "gis" group, then run grass and access the database
under /home/gis.

When I try that the startup script bails out with the following error
statement:

/usr/local/grass5/etc/lock: /.gislock5: Permission denied
Unable to properly access /.gislock5
Please notify system personel.

Unfortunately, I *am* system personnel.

Taking the statement literally, it looks to me like the script is trying
to create .gislock5 under / rather than under my home directory.  Is that
right?

On a different but related note...

Is there some reason why two users should not be able to use the same
grass installation to access data in two different mapsets?  I can see
problems with two users accessing data in the same mapset.  If it is
OK, then what is the best way to do it?


Roger Miller
Lee Wilson and Associates