[GRASS-user] Tips for setting up an new FOSS-GEO-linux-box

[Dylan Beaudette]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 7:08 AM, Nikos Alexandris
<nikos.alexandris at felis.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
> I know, I know... it's off the lists topic! But I need some help.
> Probably I am going to "migrate" soon all of my stuff in a new
> linux-box. So I would like to collect best practice tips concerning the
> following:
>
>
> OS:
> OK, I think I shouldn't ask about which OS since foss runs on everything
> (right?). But are I am curious to know if there are any advantages using
> Debian instead of Ubuntu for example?
>

I use Debian/Unstable -- but several aspects of Ubuntu are appealing.

> Filesystems:
> Which filesystem is better(=safer/faster) for data storage? Is there any
> important advantage to choose XFS for example rather than ext3?

I have heard a lot of good things about XFS, although I use ext3 for
several of my partitions. Several of our servers in the department use
XFS for everything, and we have had good success with them over the
last 4 years. I would steer clear of ReiserFS.


>
> Partitions:
> Do you keep your geo-data in a separate partition? I suppose yes. Have
> you split further your partition based on other criteria, always related
> with "working with geospatial data"?

I like putting all of my GRASS data on a seperate disk-- so that IO
intensive operations on GIS data do not slow my machine to a crawl.
Alternatively a scratch disk for the /tmp/ folder might be nice too.


> Do you keep all of your source code in a separate partition maybe?

I just keep mine in my home folder.

>
> Organisation:
> GRASS takes care to organise the data inside the GIS data-base and its
> fantastic. But what about the "raw" data? How do you organise them?
> Manually everything? Any tool to be more productive?
>

I keep non-GRASS GIS data in a folder of its own - 'gis_data' . No
fancy cataloging, just the file system. Something like ArcCatalog
(without all of the cruft) would be interesting. gdalinfo / ogrinfo
are used to check on coordinate system details.


> BackUp:
> How often do you backup your data? Do you just copy or do you compress
> as well? What is safer?

Every afternoon-- using rsync.


>
> Other:
> Any other important issues when setting-up a new foss-geo-box?
>

make sure all of the development packages get installed before
compiling from source. This can usually be sorted out by running
./configure and looking for errors. make sure that there is no overlap
between what the package manager has installed and things you plan to
install from source.

> Thank you, Nikos
>
> P.S. Maybe we can add a new wiki-page if something useful comes out of
> this thread. Or maybe not... :-)
>

That would be helpful.

Cheers,

Dylan