QGIS » QGIS Application

Pretty sure. I can start grass from the commandline.

jpalmer@xxxxx:~$ which grass
/usr/bin/grass
jpalmer@xxxxx:~$ grass --version
GRASS GIS 6.4.1

Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS) is Copyright,
1999-2011 by the GRASS Development Team, and licensed under terms of the
GNU General Public License (GPL) version >=2.

This GRASS 6.4.1 release is coordinated and produced by the
GRASS Development Team with contributions from all over the world.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

Jeremy Palmer wrote:

Pretty sure. I can start grass from the commandline.

jpalmer@xxxxx:~$ which grass
/usr/bin/grass
jpalmer@xxxxx:~$ grass --version
GRASS GIS 6.4.1

do you have multiple grass versions installed? if yes what it using processing?
please have also a look to v.out.ogr man page in your installation and see if it says that a -z flag is available.

if that flag is not available in grass 6.4.1 from the official ubuntu repositories than you may want to consider to update version using the ubuntugis repository (don't be afraid by the "unstable" name, it is not unstable software, on the contrary):

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntugis/+archive/ubuntu/ubuntugis-unstable?field.series_filter=precise

I don't think I have multiple copies installed:

dpkg -l | grep grass
ii grass 6.4.1-1ubuntu2 Geographic Resources Analysis Support System
rc grass-core 6.4.3RC3-4 GRASS GIS core components
ii libqgisgrass2.5.0 2.5.0+git20141012+659cada~precise1 QGIS - shared grass library
ii qgis-plugin-grass 2.5.0+git20141022+f2b7c0f~precise1 GRASS plugin for QGIS
ii qgis-plugin-grass-common 2.5.0+git20141022+f2b7c0f~precise1 GRASS plugin for QGIS - architecture-independent data

Yes my current install is sourced from precise/universe. man pages says it doesn't support -z. I will try ubuntugis-unstable.

But really does seem like QGIS should support better support this situation. Rather than say there's a missing dependency, it should state this version is not supported. Even better would be to support versions that don't have the -z option. After all it's only for 3D shapefiles.

Thanks
Jeremy