[GRASS-user] DEMs not reporting elevation

[John C. Tull]

I have been having no luck today working with DEMs in GRASS. I have  
tried several sources for DEM data derived from 24k quads. I can  
bring in the dem and it will draw with color as expected. If I query  
the map, I do not get elevation:
449208.962656|4171350.10373||*

If I try to produce a hillshade from the map, it is blank. This is  
making me a bit insane because I have done these things before  
without issue. I have no problem using the dem in the spearfish dataset.

I am unable to get things working using a 24k dem from:
ftp://nas.library.unr.edu/keck/30mDEM/30mdemzip/quad1113.zip

After renaming the .dem file to alcatraz_island (although I also  
tried using a NED file in another format with no name changes), I ran:
r.in.gdal input=alcatraz_island.dem output=alcatraz_island_dem

The colors are there in my region and can be changed with r.colors as  
expected, but I still have nothing returned on query. I am trying to  
use r.mapcalc or r.recode to derive a band along a contour, but I  
only get empty files returned. Is there something simple I am  
overlooking.

This happens with both 6.2.2 and 6.3cvs.

Thanks,
John Tull