[GRASS-user] Trouble getting started

[Moritz Lennert]

Hi Tom,

Le Thu, 14 Nov 2019 20:40:31 -0700,
Tom Trebisky <tom at mmto.org> a écrit :

> I am totally new to grass and having trouble.

Welcome to the community !

GRASS GIS does have a bit of a learning curve, but once you get past
the first barriers you won't be able to live without it anymore ! ;-)

> 
> I installed grass from RPM on my Fedora 30 linux system.  First I 
> installed 7.6 from official fedora packages, then I erased that and 
> installed 7.8 from packages on the Fedora "copr" repository.  I 
> downloaded the sample North Carolina dataset for version 7 (145M). I 
> untarred that into /home/tom/grassdata and when I browse to that,
> grass seems to find it and is ready to go.  But when I click on
> "Start Grass Session" I get two empty and useless windows 

When you say "empty", what does that mean exactly ? Could you provide a
screenshot ?

> and see the
> messages:
> 
> (wxgui.py:30767): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 20:37:16.297: 
> gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion 'size >= 0' failed in
> GtkScrollbar
> 
> (wxgui.py:30767): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 20:37:16.297: 
> gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion 'size >= 0' failed in
> GtkScrollbar

These are just annoying messages, but harmless and AFAIK do not
explain your issue.

> 
> I get the exact same with 7.6 and 7.8.
> 
> The useless windows call themselves "layer manager" and "map display".

These two windows should open by default when you launch the GRASS GIS
GUI, but they should contain buttons and menus.

If they do, then the next step for you should be to use the layer
manager window to add a map which should then appear in the map display
window.

Have you had the opportunity to read these to introductions:

https://grass.osgeo.org/grass78/manuals/helptext.html
https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Quick_wxGUI_tutorial

Also check here:

https://grass.osgeo.org/documentation/tutorials/

for some more in depth tutorials.

> This seems like a reasonable way to get started.  What if anything am
> I doing wrong, or is this some known bug?

At this stage we need a bit more info to really know.

Moritz