[GRASS-user] How to install Grass into Ubuntu

[John Stevenson]

Hi Matt,

I'm using Grass on a dual-boot Vista/Xubuntu 7.10 machine.  It's mine, 
so my data live on the NTFS partition and I can mount it with me as the 
owner (and group).  It took me a while to figure it out, and now I can't 
remember how I did it, but my fstab entry looks like this:

/dev/sda3       /media/OS       ntfs-3g 
umask=0002,uid=mbessjs3,gid=mbessjs3,allow_other      0    0

Hopefully that works for you, too.

John


Matt B wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 1:14 AM, Glynn Clements 
> <glynn at gclements.plus.com <mailto:glynn at gclements.plus.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     Matt B wrote:
>
>     > > Note that GRASS won't let you select a mapset as the current
>     mapset
>     > > (where new files are stored) unless you own it. Write
>     permission isn't
>     > > sufficient.
>     > >
>     > > If you are creating a location which is to be shared by multiple
>     > > users, you either need to create a mapset directory for each user,
>     > > owned by the user, or grant all such users write permission on the
>     > > location directory so that they can create their own mapset
>     directory
>     > > (which they will own).
>     >
>     > Thanks for the heads up on this Glynn, my problem is that I'm on
>     a dual boot
>     > system and I'm storing mapsets/data on an NTFS drive. It's being
>     > automatically mounted with the owner set as root and read/write
>     permission
>     > for everyone. If I put the data on the ext3 filesystem, it
>     works. I'll mess
>     > around with fstab and mount the data drive as the appropriate
>     user. Having
>     > said that.... it does seem to me that this sort of check is
>     doubling up.
>     > File permissions are usually run by the file system/OS. While
>     having a
>     > sanity check for "read/write" access is a good idea, checking
>     for ownership
>     > seems a little over the top. <insert newby user disclaimer here>.
>
>     AFAICT, the check exists because otherwise people grant group-write
>     permission to mapset directories without fully understanding the
>     consequences. In particular, you can end up being unable to modify,
>     rename or remove files because they reside in a directory created by
>     another user and lacking group-write permission.
>
>     The possibility of "free-for-all" filesystems (i.e. where not only are
>     all files and directories world-writable, but where any new files and
>     directories will always be world-writable) has only arisen recently.
>
>     The native Windows builds skip the ownership check, but Unix builds
>     will perform it regardless of the filesystem type. Unfortunately, I
>     don't know of any (robust and portable) way to detect when a Windows
>     filesystem is being used on Unix.
>
>     --
>     Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com
>     <mailto:glynn at gclements.plus.com>>
>
>
> After banging my head against the ntfs wall for a little while here 
> (for some reason the guys who write the ntfs stuff also have some 
> ideas on who should be allowed to mount / own filesystems and block 
> devices).
> While writing software for the lowest common denominator isn't 
> necessarily a bad thing, including this sort of thing in the software 
> to stop people overwriting others files does seem a little redundant 
> and in my case annoying. I'll add another disclaimer in case someone 
> points out that theres an easy fix for this as I'm the guy who can't 
> get an ntfs partition mounted without it being owned by root (without 
> recompiling stuff that would probably break on the next apt-get update).
>
> I'll be running this from my somewhat smaller ext3 partition for the 
> time being unless someone can point me at a "don't do this check" 
> button (please, someone point me at that button).
>
> Matt
>
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>
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-- 


Dr John Stevenson
Postdoctoral Research Associate
School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences
Williamson Building (Room 2.42)
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL, UK
tel. +44(0)161 306 6585; fax. +44(0)161 306 9361;
john.stevenson at manchester.ac.uk