GRASS Basics - Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools - page 289

Next. This brings up a summary of what we just did, telling us that we
have created a database in our chosen directory, a named location, and
a mapset.
Click Finish, and we are done. You now have a new location and mapset
ready for your use. The plugin automatically opens it and sets it as the
current location. You should be able to see the region delineated by a
red rectangle on the map canvas.
Using the QGIS/GRASS plugin allowed us to create the new location
without knowing the gory details about the extent of our data and
projection parameters. Once you've become accustomed to the GRASS
paradigm, you may choose to create your locations/mapsets using the
GRASS shell.
Creating a Location with GRASS
You are probably noticing about now that we haven't run GRASS yet. So
far everything we have done has been through QGIS using the GRASS
plugin. Now it's time to show you how to start GRASS and create a
location. Starting GRASS depends on your platform:
• Linux : From a terminal window, run the GRASS binary using grass
combined with the version number. So to start GRASS 6.2, you
would use grass62 from the command line or the menu.
• Mac OS X : Start by double-clicking the GRASS icon in your Appli-
cations folder.
• Windows: Start your Cygwin shell, and start GRASS by running
grass62 or start it from the menu.
When you start GRASS, you are presented with either a text-based form
or a GUI dialog box requesting the location and mapset you want to use
for the session. Which you see depends on how you started GRASS and
which mode you used last (GRASS remembers and starts up in the last-
used mode). For the purpose of this example, we started GRASS from
the command line and specified the -text switch to force start-up in text
mode.
In Figure C.4 , on the following page, you can see the start-up screen
for GRASS 6.2.2. Starting GRASS requires three pieces of information:
the database directory, location, and mapset. These requirements are
nicely explained on the form.