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2. Installation

2.1 Software Requirements

The Pilot Logbook for Grok is not stand alone software. As the name suggests, it is a designed for use with the xmbase-grok database manager written by Thomas Driemeyer. If you don't already have it, you must obtain and install the xmbase-grok software first. The latest distribution can always be obtained from the xmbase-grok home page given below.

If you want to build xmbase-grok from source code, you must have the OSF Motif widget libraries installed on your system. You may even need the shared libraries to use a pre-built binary, (unless it has been statically linked, in which case you won't). One possible alternative is Lesstif, a freely available Motif clone. I tried an older release quite awhile back with less than satisfying results, but those problems may have since been fixed. There are some links to pre-built binaries on the xmbase-grok home page.

xmbase-grok Home Page:

http://www.in-berlin.de/User/bitrot/grok.html

xmbase-grok binaries for Linux:

ftp://ftp.netaxs.com/web/people/dlj0/

xmbase-grok binaries for Red Hat Linux (RPM packages):

ftp://contrib.redhat.com/

How to get OSF Motif:

http://www.rahul.net/kenton/GettingMotif.html

Lesstif - a free Motif Clone:

http://www.lesstif.org/

2.2 Obtaining the Distribution

The Pilot Logbook for Grok is distributed as a compressed Unix tar file. The distribution is available in three different compression formats, standard Unix compress, GNU gzip, and the Burrows Wheeler based bzip2, take your pick. You can download the distribution from the Pilot Logbook for Grok world wide web site at

2.3 Installation and Tuning

To install the Pilot Logbook for Grok, first verify that you have xmbase-grok installed on your system as described above. Then download the compressed tar file distribution and follow the steps below to complete the installation. Root privileges are not required.

  1. Uncompress the tar file using the utility associated with the compression format you downloaded. For example, if you downloaded the GNU gzip format, you would use the command "gunzip -v logbook-0.5.tar.gz". The other formats are similar.
  2. Now extract the distribution files from the tar file. The archive contains a top level directory of the form "logbook-0.5". Change to the working directory of your choice, and extract using the tar utility, the command "tar xvf logbook-0.5.tar" to be specific.
  3. Change your working directory to the distribution directory created by the previous step. As noted before, there are separate versions for glider and power pilots, you can install just one or both of them. Move the .db and .gf files associated with the version(s) you want to use to your personal grok directory, which by default is ~/.grok/.
  4. If you intend to use only one of the two versions, you can rename the appropriate files to logbook.db and logbook.gf respectively. However, you will need to edit the .gf file and modify the lines that begin with name and dbase respectively to reflect your new filenames.

Like many other Unix software packages, xmbase-grok can be customized to an almost infinite extent (much to the chagrin of users who are happy with anything as long as it doesn't require configuration). The -d option is worth mentioning here, it will print out all of the default X11 resources in a format that you can modify and insert into your ~/.Xdefaults personal resource file. My only little gripe with the default configuration is the choice of colors (I don't care for the red background). As an example, here are the resource values I use;

        !
        ! Grok
        !
        grok*foreground:                #000000
        grok*background:                #cccccc
        grok*colTextBack:               #ccccff


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