GRASS 6

Note: A new GRASS GIS stable version has been released: GRASS GIS 7. Go directly to the new manual page here

NAME

grass64 - The GRASS startup program

SYNOPSIS

grass64 [-] [-v] [-h | -help | --help] [-text | -gui | -tcltk | -oldtcltk | -wxpython | -wx]] [[[GISDBASE/]LOCATION_NAME/] MAPSET]

DESCRIPTION

This command is used to launch GRASS GIS. It will parse the command line arguments and then initialize GRASS for the user. Since GRASS programs require a specific environment, this program must be called before any other GRASS program can run. The command line arguments are optional and provide the user with a method to indicate the desired user interface, as well as the desired mapset to work on.

FEATURES

The grass64 startup program will remember both the desired user interface and mapset. Thus, the next time the user runs GRASS, typing grass64 (without any options) will start GRASS with the previous settings for the user interface and mapset selected.

If you specify a graphical user interface (Tcl/Tk or wxPython) the grass64 program will try to verify that the system you specified exists and that you can access it successfully. If any of these checks fail then grass64 will automatically switch back to the text user interface mode.

OPTIONS

All command line options are optional.

Flags:

-: Tries to start GRASS using location environment variables (see below)
-h -help --help: Prints a brief usage message
-text: Indicates that the text based user interface should be used
-gui (or -tcltk): Indicates that the old Tcl/Tk based graphical user interface should be used
-oldtcltk: Indicates that the even older Tcl/Tk based graphical user interface should be used
-wxpython (or -wx): Indicates that the new Python based graphical user interface should be used
-v --version: Prints the version of GRASS and exits

Parameters:

GISDBASE: Initial database directory which should be a fully qualified path (e.g., /usr/local/share/grassdata)
LOCATION_NAME: Initial location directory which is a subdirectory of GISDBASE
MAPSET: Initial mapset directory which is a subdirectory of LOCATION_NAME

Note- These parameters must be specified in one of the following ways:

MAPSET
LOCATION_NAME/MAPSET
GISDBASE/LOCATION_NAME/MAPSET

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

A number of environment variables are available at GRASS startup to assist with automation and customization. Most users will not need to bother with these.

In addition to these shell environment variables GRASS maintains a number of GIS environment variables in the $HOME/.grassrc6 file. User changes to this file will be read during the next startup of GRASS. If this file becomes corrupted the user may edit it by hand or remove it to start afresh. See the list of implemented GRASS variables for more information. The rest of this help page will only consider shell environment variables.

User Interface Environment Variable

The grass64 program will check for the existence of an environment variable called GRASS_GUI which indicates the type of user interface for GRASS to use. If this variable is not set when grass64 is run, then it will be created and then saved in the $HOME/.grassrc6 file for the next time GRASS is run. In addition to "text", "tcltk" or "wxpython", the GRASS_GUI variable can be set to the name of the Tcl/Tk GUI to use, for example "gis.m" or "d.m".

There is an order of precedence in the way grass64 determines the user interface to use. The following is the hierarchy from highest precedence to lowest.

Interface precedence: • Command line argument
• Environment variable GRASS_GUI
• Value set in $HOME/.grassrc6
• Default value - currently gis.m

Tcl/Tk and Python Environment Variables

If you choose to use the Tcl/Tk graphical user interface, then the following environment variables can be used to override your system default tclsh and wish commands.

GRASS_TCLSH: Command to use to override tclsh
GRASS_WISH: Command to use to override wish
GRASS_PYTHON: Command to use to override python

Example Use of GRASS Tcl/Tk Environment Variables

Suppose your system has Tcl/Tk 8.3 installed and you install a personal version of the Tcl/Tk 8.5 binaries under $HOME/bin. You can use the above variables to have GRASS use the Tcl/Tk 8.5 binaries instead.

   GRASS_TCLSH = $HOME/bin/tclsh8.5
   GRASS_WISH  = $HOME/bin/wish8.5

Example Use of the GRASS Python Environment Variable

   GRASS_PYTHON=python2.5

Addon path to extra local GRASS modules

This environment variable allows the user to extend the GRASS program search paths to include locally developed/installed addon modules which are not distributed with the standard GRASS release.

   GRASS_ADDON_PATH=/usr/mytools
   GRASS_ADDON_PATH=/usr/mytools:/usr/local/othertools

In this example above path(s) would be added to the standard GRASS path environment.

HTML browser variable

The GRASS_HTML_BROWSER environment variable allows the user to set the HTML web browser to use for dispalying help pages.

Location Environment Variables

The Synopsis and Options sections above describe options that can be used to set the location and mapset that GRASS will use. These values can also be set with environment variables. However, specifying the location and mapset variables on the command line will override these environment variables. The available variables are as follows:

LOCATION: A fully qualified path to a mapset (eg /usr/local/share/grassdata/spearfish60/PERMANENT). This environment variable overrides the GISDBASE, LOCATION_NAME, and MAPSET variables.
GISDBASE: Initial database directory which should be a fully qualified path (eg /usr/local/share/grassdata)
LOCATION_NAME: Initial location directory which is a subdirectory of GISDBASE
MAPSET: Initial mapset directory which is a subdirectory of LOCATION_NAME

Running non-interactive batch jobs

If the GRASS_BATCH_JOB environment variable is set to the full path and filename of a shell script then GRASS will be launched in a non-interactive way and the script will be run. The script itself can be interactive if that is what the user requires. When it is finished GRASS will automatically exit using the exit-success code given by the script. The script file must have its executable bit set.

Note

Note that you will need to set these variables using the appropriate method required for the UNIX shell that you use. (e.g. in a Bash shell you must "export" the variables for them to propogate)

EXAMPLES

The following are some examples of how you could start GRASS

grass64: Start GRASS using the default user interface. The user will be prompted to choose the appropriate location and mapset.
grass64 -gui: Start GRASS using the Tcl/Tk based user interface. The user will be prompted to choose the appropriate location and mapset.
grass64 -text: Start GRASS using the text based user interface. The user will be prompted to choose the appropriate location and mapset.
grass64 ~/grassdata/spearfish60/user1: Start GRASS using the default user interface and automatically launch into the given mapset, bypassing the mapset selection menu.
grass64 -gui -: Start GRASS using the Tcl/Tk based user interface and try to obtain the location and mapset from environment variables.

Other examples

There are a variety of ways in which the location environment variables (see above) can be used to specify the mapset to use. The following are some possible examples.

Example 1: The environment variables are defined as follows:

LOCATION = /usr/local/share/grassdata/spearfish60/PERMANENT
GISDBASE = /usr/local/share/grassdata
LOCATION_NAME = spearfish60
MAPSET = PERMANENT

Start GRASS with the following command:

grass64 -

GRASS will start with the mapset defined by LOCATION since the LOCATION variable overrides the other variables.
Example 2: The environment variables are defined as follows:

GISDBASE = /usr/local/share/grassdata
LOCATION_NAME = spearfish60
MAPSET = PERMANENT

Start GRASS with the following command:

grass64 -

GRASS will start with the mapset defined by GISDBASE/LOCATION_NAME/MAPSET.
Example 3: The environment variables are defined as follows:

LOCATION = /usr/local/share/grassdata/spearfish60/PERMANENT
GISDBASE = /usr/local/share/grassdata
LOCATION_NAME = spearfish60
MAPSET = PERMANENT

Start GRASS with the following command:

grass64 /usr/home/grass/data/thailand/forests

GRASS will start with the mapset /home/grass/data/thailand/forests which overrides the environment variables.
Example 4: The environment variables are defined as follows:

LOCATION = /usr/local/share/grassdata/spearfish60/PERMANENT
GISDBASE = /usr/local/share/grassdata
LOCATION_NAME = spearfish60
MAPSET = PERMANENT

Start GRASS with the following command:

grass64 swamps

GRASS will start with the mapset defined by GISDBASE/LOCATION_NAME/swamps since the command line argument for the mapset overrides the environment variable MAPSET.
Example 5: The environment variables are defined as follows:

LOCATION = /usr/local/share/grassdata/spearfish60/PERMANENT
GISDBASE = /usr/local/share/grassdata
LOCATION_NAME = spearfish60
MAPSET = PERMANENT

Start GRASS with the following command:

grass64 thailand/forests

GRASS will start with the mapset defined by GISDBASE/thailand/forests since the command line arguments for the location and mapset overrides the environment variables LOCATION_NAME and MAPSET.

CAVEAT

If you start GRASS using the Tcl/Tk interface you must have a wish command in your $PATH variable. That is, the command must be named wish and not something like wish8.3. By default, some Tcl/Tk installations do not create a wish command. In these cases the system administrator must create an appropriate link to the actual wish program.

For example, suppose Tcl/Tk 8.3 programs are installed in /usr/local/bin. Then the system administrator should go to the /usr/local/bin directory and run the commands "ln -s wish8.3 wish" and "ln -s tclsh8.3 tclsh" to properly install Tcl/Tk for use with GRASS.

Furthermore, if you have more than one version of Tcl/Tk installed, make sure that the version you want to use with GRASS is the first version found in your $PATH variable. GRASS searches your $PATH variable until it finds the first version of wish.

FILES

$UNIX_BIN/grass64 - GRASS startup program (Linux, MacOSX etc.)
$WINDOWS_BIN/grass64.bat - GRASS startup program (MS-Windows)
$GISBASE/etc/Init.sh - GRASS initialization script called by grass64
$GISBASE/etc/gis_set.tcl - Tcl/Tk script to set the location and mapset to use. Called by Init.sh

AUTHORS (of this page)

Justin Hickey
Markus Neteler
Hamish Bowman

Last changed: $Date: 2014-05-14 01:11:57 -0700 (Wed, 14 May 2014) $

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