[GRASS-user] New user, GRASS crashes on "Create New Location"

[Zenon Panoussis]

Monica Waggoner wrote:

>>> I created my
>>> GRASSDATA folder and downloaded the sample data to it, but when I click
>>> "Create New Location" the program crashes with no visible errors. 

>> Check that .grassrc exists in your home directory and that it says
>> GISDBASE: /path/to/your/grassdataroot.

> It did not; I created a file with that line in it, 

Hmm - my wrong. It's called .grassrc6 and it gets created when you create
a location. You crash before you get that far, so it's normal you don't
have it.

> I think (it should be /blah/blah/GRASSDATA, right?) 

If you have created a location it would say something like

GISDBASE: /home/username
LOCATION_NAME: test
MAPSET: test
GRASS_GUI: text

GISDBASE is not the directory that holds your raw data waiting to be
processed, but the directory in which your location will be created.
When you create a location, a directory with the same name will be
created and it should not exist already.

> but nothing else, and that didn't solve the problem... it still crashes.

How far do you get? You wrote "I can run the program apparently fine"
but grass won't do very much without a location, so I wonder what you
mean by being able to run it fine.

>> If all this seems right, run
>> strace -v -f -o somefile grass6x
>> until you crash.

> Where should I run that from?  I just typed that into the terminal
> prompt from the home directory, and it said strace: grass6x: command not
> found.  

You did almost right, but you need to use the actual grass binary name
instead of "grass6x". That would be grass60 or grass61 or whatever it
is that you have.

> Do I need to be in a different directory? 

No, grass will use your home directory by default unless GISDBASE is set
to something else. What you could do, just to rule out permissions and
display problems, is to run 'grass60 -text' once as root (substitute your
actual grass binary name if not grass60). It should give you a welcome
note and some suggestions, then ask you to create a location, and it
won't give you any option except to actually create a location or cancel
and exit.

If this works, exit and try again without -text . If that works too, go
back to being unprivileged user and repeat.

> (Sorry, it's been
> years since I last used *nix on a daily basis... my brain is thoroughly
> corrupted by the bright shiny flimsiness of Windows icons.)

Luckily, that's curable nowadays ;)

Z